The year in blogging

Although 2023 was not a particularly exciting or productive hobby year, it was an excellent year for the Braymere blog. 

In this my fifteenth year of blogging, I will publish three hundred sixty five posts, more than any year except 2020. Readership has also been at an all time high, with over five hundred sixty thousand pageviews, putting me well past the seven million mark.

I didn't expect any of that in January.

In fact, the year got off to a slow start. I only wrote sixteen posts and fully half of them were about Olive.

That changed in February. 

As per usual, it was all painting, all the time!

The last weekend of Painting Party overlapped with BreyerWest.

Between the two events, I had enough material to fill this space through the middle of March.

After that, I finished one occasional series...

and started another one.

Then the wheels came off the bus in my personal life.

April was a really bad month. I took comfort in writing...

and playing fun online thought games with other hobbyists.

May was better. I wrote a lot of posts about hobby rooms...

and rightsizing. Both of these topics remain important to me, and I expect to revisit them in 2024.

Between April and June, I went on several short trips. Most notably, Seth and I went to Sand Wash Basin for our anniversary.

That was an amazing - and  positively elemental - adventure.

I wrote a dozen blog posts about that one weekend.

When I was done doing that, it was the beginning of BreyerFest season. June was filled with pictures of the Best Customs Contest and Diorama Contest entries.

I didn't actually go to BreyerFest, but you wouldn't have known from the amount of posts I wrote about the event.

Weirdly, I think I probably did a better job covering it from my home in Colorado than I have any of the years I was in attendance.

August was... another bad month.

But then, right at the end, I went to Iceland.

I had the best time.

I caught Covid on the way home, but fortunately, it was a mild case.

While I was recovering, I wrote a ridiculous number of posts about my time in Iceland. 

Except maybe it wasn't that ridiculous. The Braymere blog received over one hundred thousand pageviews in September, making it far and away the most read month in this blog's history. Perhaps I should go to Iceland more often.

By October, I was feeling better. Unfortunately, Olive was not.

I rode some other horses, wrote some angsty posts and worried a lot.

I also got a little sassy. This outburst about online negativity in regards to new Breyer releases was my most viewed post of 2023.

In November, Olive and I celebrated our two year anniversary.

We also got some bad news. 

I wrote a grumpy post, this time about horse racing. It received a lot of shares on Facebook, and I got hate mail from non-hobbyist strangers. I'm telling you, this has been a year.

Now Christmas has come and gone, so for better or worse, it's almost over.

In closing, I'd like to thank everyone who has read, commented on and shared Braymere blog posts this year. Extra thanks to those who have supported this space financially: Hannah Clark, Teresa Buzzell, Anne Veeneman-var der Weel, Jennifer Lambert, Elizabeth Denning, Mary Ann Snyder, Lynn Cassels-Caldwell, Maggie Jenner-Bennett. Susan Bensema Young, Elaine Lindelef, Marianna Stepniewski, Barb DiAnnibella, Mares in Black, Ruth Sheridan, Katie Hail-Jares, Danielle Dunn, Teresa Fedak, Regan O'Keefe, Michelle Evans, Bobbie Allen, Anna Helt, Jackie Rossi, Anne Field, Kira Matrejek, Erica Baird, Fabian Rodrigues, Jessica Hekman, Robbie Ramirez, Jackie Moore, Tiffany Purdy, Andrea Brygidyr, Kim Szudlarek, Jes Michaels, Lindsay Diamond and a couple other folks who have chose to remain anonymous. It is because of your support that this blog is what it is today. Thank you, thank you!