2020

It was June. I went for a run around my city. This was a Saturday and it had been a very hard week in the exact middle of a very hard year for all of us. Riots had broken out across the United States after George Floyd was killed. People were upset everywhere. We were all heartsick. 

The Most Viewed Posts of 2020

It's time for one of my favorite annual walks down memory lane. Below I've corralled a ranked 10 posts from this very ridiculous website. These are the pieces you most viewed from 2020. Please enjoy.

And to truly kick it off, here's a picture of me hiking with Skylar and a dozen of his sweaters:

 

10. A Good Finder

Coming in at number 10, I wrote about Skylar's absolutely outrageous unrealistic expectations that I should be able to find things inside of stores. 

2018

I sit at my desk at home on this snowy Sunday in Salt Lake City. Two dogs are wrestling at my feet, occasionally humping one another even though both are neutered. Apparently we have perverted pets. Skylar has just made a mess of my kitchen attempting to cook pancakes. And it's time to pen a year-end post.

I started this tradition in 2010. Nearly none of you were around then. I mean, around Stranger. I'm sure some of you were alive by that time. In 2010 I wrote to an audience of about five. In fact, in that year-end post, I wrote that during that year "I blogged and wondered how many people were actually reading."

There have been so many dramatic changes in my life and in yours since I quietly wrote those words eight years ago.

2015

As this wet and now snowy year winds down, I continue one of my favorite Stranger traditions. In the days after Christmas each year I start compiling my frustratingly-vague and probably obnoxiously-boastful list of the year's happenings.

2014

Each year when I sit down to write the New Year wrap-up post, I begin the process by reviewing what I wrote the year before. It gets me in the mood to reflect. And it's always fascinating to me to review the emotions I expressed the prior year.

One of the best things about writing this blog, and writing so regularly, is that it's a really effective way for me to preserve my states of being and to track the evolution that comes with growing up. As I sat and read the 2013 post, the flood of 2013's emotions came back to me.

That was a hard year. In many ways, my very hardest. And when I reached its conclusion, I remember thinking that it was a miracle that I survived it. I know those words sound dramatic. But for me, at that time, they didn't even begin to capture how torn apart my soul felt after everything I had experienced in Palau and its aftermath.

I knew that 2014 was going to be a different story. It had to be. Because I felt like I began it at rock bottom. And true rock bottom is a firm boundary, comforting in its limits that at least appear to mean that things can't get worse.

The Top Ten Most Viewed Stranger Posts, 2014

Every time I get on Facebook right now there are a thousand posts that are like "check out Amy's year!" and then you can click on it and scroll through a thousand pictures to see what Amy ate in 2014. And I'm always like, WHY? And then I click on it and scroll through every picture.

Then I thought, why not do the same thing with Stranger?

I've been meaning to start this thing every year where I give you a list of the ten most viewed Stranger posts of the year. But I've just never gotten around to it in the craziness of the end-of-year holidays. And I don't even know if this will be a post anyone cares about. But at Stranger, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!

It's been a wonderful year at Stranger. I'll have the full year recap post up next week. But let me just say now, as I've said before, thank you so much for your kindness, your humor, your friendship, and all of the strange parts of you. I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

And now, without further ado, the 2014 Top Ten Most Viewed Stranger Posts: