Each year around this time, I write a series of posts recapping the year. To start, I’d like to repost my most popular pieces this year, based on Google Analytics data.
- Top Five Apps For Writers was a post I put together about what I use on a regular basis: OurDeal for contracts, Freshbooks for invoicing, TeuxDeux for lists, Chrome’s Incognito setting for distraction-free browing, and Scrivener for keeping everything organized. If I had to write this over again, I’d add 37Signal’s Basecamp, too. And Strict Pomodoro. Look for another list soon! I was excited that this was my #1 post for the year, though, as I’ve been moving into tech writing in the last few months.
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BJJ Gym Review: Marcelo Garcia’s Jiu-Jitsu Academy in New York City was my recap of visiting the Brazilian jiu-jitsu mecca, and training with Marcelo himself, and also with Henrique. There’s a limitless amount of footage of Marcelo teaching, and of course his books (my review of one almost made the top 10), but not a lot of detailed info about a one-day training excursion from the eyes of a white belt.
- Who Was Chris McBride (And Why You Should Care) was part of a fundraiser I put together in memory of a dear friend. We raised $1600 to help child victims of human trafficking at Children of the Night, a California-based non-profit organization, and I had so much help from so many people in helping me with this goal, from every single donor to a million A-list bloggers who donated gifts to participants. This particular post was a rewrite after a non-descript one I wrote which got virtually no response. Nate St. Pierre went out of his way to explain to me why the original copy wasn’t working, and I am so grateful. And I wrote a very long-winded post on successful online fundraising on Blog Action Day to help people learn from all the mistakes I made.
- Ultimate Women Challenge Results was a culmination of almost two years of reporting on some really horrific conditions taking place on the set of what was supposed to be a women’s mixed martial arts reality show. The post that broke the internet, which I wrote after lawsuit threats from the show producers inspired me to dig deeper, was published in February 2011 on the now-inactive MMA HQ blog. For background info, that’s the one to read: Leaked! Ultimate Women Challenge Disaster: Filming Plagued by Lack of Foods, Funds & Training.
- I Took A Deadbeat Client To Small Claims Court and Won: Here’s the Story is a very long-winded post I wrote about a client who refused to pay me for work I completed, and the ordeal that followed. In retrospect (and months later), I’m not sure going to court was the best use of my time. There’s a pretty interesting video on getting betrayed and screwed over by Noah Kagan and Neville Medhora of AppSumo which had some good food for thought.
- Book Review: Paleo Diet Budget Shopping Guide is my review of one of Robb Wolf’s e-books… one of the five zillion Paleo publications I reviewed this year.
- On Crossfit Mean Streets: A Call For a Paradigm Shift was a bit of a rant I wrote in response to a truly horrid situation. It got a lot of readers.
- 5 Ways To Make Better Eggs is just a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years.
- My Thoughts on Jonah Lehrer was a piece I wrote in the aftermath of his whole, uh, debacle. This was before the 575 other posts about him in the
echo chamberblogosphere.
- Will These 9 Apps Change the Face of Media? I think I’d probably rewrite this piece after attending ONACamp Minneapolis, so check out my open Google doc of apps from that conference as well.
- Book Review: Olympic Weightlifting for Sport by Greg Everett. Pretty self-explanatory.
- A Quarterly.co Review: Machines For Experimental Living was a piece I wrote about the very first box I got from Joshua Foer as part of Quarterly.co’s subscription–where you can pay to get these amazingly random curated gifts every three months. His new one‘s even better!
What was different this year:
In 2011, my top posts were about Paleo food, BJJ, free music, nice footwear and a little bit about SEO. This year’s posts didn’t fit as neatly into specific categories, though popular themes seemed to be the interplay between technology and media, reviews of things (be they BJJ gyms or Olylifting books or Paleo e-books or random curated books), as well as hand-writing over social justice juxtaposed against fitness themes. Or something like that.
Anyway! That concludes the top 12 of 2012. I’ll be posting some of my favorite articles on other sites (and in other magazines), and going over the survey results soon, so stay tuned.
