It’s that time of year when I take a step back and look at what actually happened over the last twelve months.
Going into 2025, I fully intended to blog more consistently. In reality, that consistency only really showed up in the last four months — and if I’m being completely honest, it’s mostly been the last two.
And yet, despite that slow restart, this blog saw more life this year than I expected.
This wasn’t a year of volume. It was a year of re-entry.
After long stretches of relative quiet, 2025 became about finding my rhythm again — figuring out what I still wanted to write about, what felt forced, and what I kept coming back to even when no one was asking for it. Writing sorta stopped being something I planned to do and slowly became something I did again.
By the numbers
In 2025, I published 35 posts — or 36, if we include this last one.
Activity was uneven early on, then noticeably picked up toward the end of the year, with December alone accounting for 12 posts. November wasn’t far behind. The pattern is pretty obvious when you look at the graph: once the habit settled in, momentum followed.
Traffic followed that same curve. Most of the meaningful spikes happened in the fall and early winter, when writing became regular again rather than aspirational. With some surprising explosive growth — as well as some steady, noticeable movement. Overall the year ended with nearly 540,000 pageviews!
A note on lifetime stats
One important caveat before going any further: the lifetime statistics shown below only go back to June 30, 2010.
The first five years of this blog — from 2005 onward — simply aren’t reflected in those totals. I used StatCounter back then to track my traffic to the blog. So while the numbers are still meaningful, they’re incomplete by design.
Even so, seeing the counter tick past 2.13 million page views since 2010 was a quiet reminder of something I tend to forget: writing accumulates. Slowly. Invisibly. And then all at once.
What people actually read
Unsurprisingly, EVE Online content still dominates the all-time most-read posts. That’s nearly two decades of accumulated interest doing what it does.
The top 5 most viewed post of 2025 were the following:
- Help me save "Fiddler's Edge" and add a great blog to the Blog Pack (2011)
- EVE Online Blogroll lovefest! (2008)
- The EVE Blog Banter #17 Special Edition: The Ladies of New Eden (2010)
- The EVE Online Blog Pack (2008)
- The EVE Blog Banter #15 Special Edition: Why we love EVE Online Contest (2010)
What surprised me this year was the 2 most-read non-EVE post.
That distinction goes to an older piece: “10 riveting post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels to dive into after Hugh Howey’s Wool”, which quietly pulled in over 1,100 views this year alone, even though it was originally published in 2023. No updates. No promotion. No chasing relevance. Just a post with a long shelf life continuing to find its audience. That single data point probably taught me more than any traffic spike: good content matters. Great content lives on.
Speaking of content that holds up, the second most-viewed non-EVE post was a Star Wars–themed piece — “Duel of the Fates vs. The Rise of Skywalker: Which would have been a better Episode IX?” — which pulled in just over a thousand views this past year.
It’s a good reminder that fandom conversations don’t really expire — they just go quiet until someone stumbles across them again and decides to keep the discussion going.
What 2025 clarified for me
If 2025 reinforced anything, it’s this: I’m far more interested in writing things that last than reacting quickly. I now leave that to my Bluesky account.
The posts that keep working are the ones that took their time — explainers, reflections, deep dives, and pieces written out of genuine curiosity rather than obligation. The more I leaned into that, the more the blog felt like home again.
Looking ahead to 2026
Going into 2026, the goal isn’t to post more. It’s to post with intent.
I want this blog to keep leaning into:
- City builders, strategy games, and systems worth unpacking
- RPGs — digital and tabletop — as spaces for creativity and community
- Sci-fi and fantasy that reward thinking about worlds, not just plots
- Thoughtful looks at how AI intersects with creativity, writing, and play
- And a lot more EVE Online, as I continue to dive back into the abyss that is New Eden
That last point deserves a bit more context.
Ironically, it wasn’t a brand-new game or a sudden burst of inspiration that truly pulled me back into regular blogging — it was the cleanup. Going back through years of old EVE posts, fixing links, tidying up the archives, and making sense of what was still relevant turned out to be the spark.
Revisiting that body of work reminded me why I enjoyed writing here in the first place. Not because the posts were perfect, but because so much of the fun came from building and tending a community — managing the EVE Blog Pack, maintaining EVE blogrolls, running Blog Banters, and creating spaces where other voices could connect and bounce ideas off one another. That sense of shared momentum was a huge part of what made the blog feel alive.
That EVE cleanup quietly flipped a switch, and before I knew it, I was writing again. More often. With less hesitation.
Coming back to EVE itself followed the same pattern. This isn’t about chasing the meta or pretending I never left. It’s about relearning the game with fresh eyes — asking beginner questions again, poking at things I never fully understood, and writing through that rediscovery as I go.
You’ll likely see more series, more long-form posts, and fewer one-off reactions. I’m also planning to keep refining recurring formats — weekly digests, spotlights, and structured guides — so the blog feels less like a stream and more like a place you can wander through.
No grand promises. Just a clearer sense of intent for the year ahead.
Here’s to 2026 — wherever the writing takes us.
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