Grumpy Rumblings 2021 year in Blogging

Traffic is again a little up compared to last year.  Posts are down a bit (209 this year compared to 210(!)), and comments are also up.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2021:

• 1 My cousin’s wedding December 2011
• 2 Liberty Tabletop Review: We bought cutlery April 2017
• 3 How often do you have to buy new plates and glasses:  Musings on breakage April 2017 (I don’t know why this became popular last year and continued this year)
• 4 I am not ok August 2021
• 5 Why I don’t want to list my pronouns January 2021

Two of these are from 2021 (Last year none of them were from 2020!) and, of course, the #1 post is still from students trying to plagiarize a really common composition assignment. We have cornered the market on plagiarizing a short essay about a relative’s wedding.

According to our stats, here’s the most popular posts from 2021:

• I am not ok
• Why I don’t want to list my pronouns
• RBOC from March 1, 2021 (I think this is a first for an RBOC)  This one has a lot of complaining that is also in I am not ok above.  People like complaining!
• Link Love from Jan 2, 2021 (I think this is a first for a Link Love).  See above comment about people loving complaining.
• DH’s Delta Trainer/Co-Pilot Review  (DH is still going strong with this and would 100% recommend if you want to get into shape and have time to do so– if there is interest, I can do a post updating.)

Top referring sites were (no change from last year!):

• bardiac.blogspot.com
• something-remarkable.blogspot.com
• http://naturalscientist.blogspot.com/
• academic-jungle.blogspot.com
• delagar.blogspot.com

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & the UK came next.

Our most commented post was Why I don’t want to list my pronouns (note to self for next year:  this stat is now hidden under “insights” and is no longer on site stats) (Thank you previous self!  Also, self next year, it’s been further hidden in the comments part– you have to change to comments by posts and pages where it says comments by authors) (Thank you previous self!)

I can’t get the most active commenters for the year, only for some undetermined amount of time. :( These were the 5 most active commenters on that unspecified amount of time:

1.  Revanche@agaishanlife 60
2.  Debbie M 36
3.  First Gen American 30
4.  Three way tie for 4th:  mnitabach, omdg, Matthew D. Healy 27

Yay Revanche!  This means you get to tell us where to donate our most recent month’s proceeds from amazon sales.  Either tell us and link up in the comments (if you want more exposure) or email us at grumpyrumblings at gmail if you want it to be more secret-like.

Any blog commentary or highlights from the grumpy gallery?  Also, congratulate Revanche in the comments.  :)

Ask the grumpies: How do you steer a conversation away from complaining?

Debbie M asks:

how do you steer conversation away from complaining? I like a good rant as much as the next person, and sadly I also complain as much as the next person. But I don’t like that.

Some negative things absolutely need to be discussed and handled, and some problems need venting. But I don’t want those to be the ONLY topics of conversation for hours on end. Think: complaining about work problems in a very repetitive way. Probably shouting, “You already told me that three times!” is not ideal.

Just three?  You’re lucky!

Not so long ago (before someone switched jobs) I may have asked #2 a “hypothetical” question similar to this one.  She suggested kitten pictures, but I kind of wonder if that’s just rewarding the problem.  (She also got the hint though… especially when my immediate reaction the next time was to send kitten pictures.)

#2:  My favorite topic-changer is to talk about kittens.  No matter what the conversation is about, just start talking about how kittens are great, they are so fluffy and pouncy and cute and they hop and they purr…

Student loan grumples.

#1:  so my student loans got sold to this stupid mohela place and their website is stupid

 #2:  they’re still low interest though, right?

just a pain to pay?

 #1:  right

 #2:  how many years ya got left?

Maybe they’ll get sold again…

#1:  wow, that’s dumb.  To make a one-time extra payment, you have to set up a recurring payment but just stop it before the second one would happen.

talk about yer non-intuitive

 #2:  sounds like something they don’t want you to do

 #1:  no, they really don’t

too effing bad

(update:  the payment went through, at least…)