A final summary of A Year of Living Curiously

Day 365 – Last Day

I have only one more thing to say at the end of this Year of Living Curiously, and that is: THANK YOU!

Thank you to those faithful readers, friends and strangers alike, who have been following this blog. It was wonderful and motivating for me to feel your presence and support. There are a few people who read it every day. To these people I want to offer special thanks. I feel you should get a medal for tenacity and true friendship!

Among those readers there are people who:

• Gave me a CD
• Sent me a book
• Took a photo of a window display with a great curiosity quotation
• Sent me their favorite curiosity quotations
• Liked
• Commented (either in person, by e-mail, or online)
• Challenged
• Asked how it was going
• Encouraged
• Checked in with me when I wrote about feeling overwhelmed or worried

I have already thanked most of you at least once, but THANK YOU AGAIN!!!

Day 363 – Statistics

Today I just want to take a quick look at some statistics as provided by WordPress.

Again, I have to mention that I have not finished updating categories and tags (have checked through Day 242), so the numbers are not entirely accurate—but then you already know that I wasn’t spectacularly consistent in using the categories and tags so such an analysis only gives a basic idea of trends anyway.

Total views: So far there have been 2,176 views. 🙂 Thank you!!!

Most viewed post overall: 1 September 2016 with 20 views (This is not surprising as it was the first day and I had sent out an e-mail announcing the start of my blog.)

So far, the category I have used the most is: Things to be curious about (132 times)

The category I have used the least is (sadly for me): Going deeper (7 times)

The tag I used the most is: Interpersonal curiosity (a stunning, for me, 55 times)

The tag I used the least is: Actually there are a number of tags that were only used once, so I couldn’t really say.

For myself, I did also want to record the days when I just checked in but didn’t post anything about curiosity. I kept track of this with the tag “Taking a break,” which has come up five times so far. I think there will be at least twice that number by the time I’m done checking tags. From May on I was pretty overwhelmed by work, which was the main cause of my just checking in.

And that’s it for the “statistics”.

Day 312 – Just checking in

Yesterday evening I simply forgot to post and schedule for today. I put it down to the relief of finishing the week and completing and handing in all the stuff I had to do. That and the heat, which is getting pretty uncomfortable. And I’m sure the really nice lunch at a friend’s house with a couple of glasses of wine played a part. Tomorrow morning you’ll find a post as usual. 🙂

Day 282 – Breathing in the morning air

I’m not practicing much curiosity at the moment, as I think I have made clear over the last few days. 😉 This morning, though, I did manage—at least for a bit—to intentionally open up, pull myself out of my head, and pay attention to what was happening on our morning walk without judging or thinking too much. At least that is a little bit of success.

Day 279 – An anti-curiosity joke

I was just trying to help two Italian tourists understand why the Votivkirche in Vienna was built, and came up against my limitations in that language. (They didn’t speak English or German.) How do you say “emperor” in Italian? And “kill”? (Oddly enough–or perhaps not so given my operatic background–I know how to say “die” but not “kill”.) My (unsuccessful) gyrations reminded me of a joke about speaking foreign languages.

A man was hiking in the Austrian alps. He came across a couple of old guys sunning themselves at an alpine hut. The hiker needed directions so he asked, “Do you speak English?” The old mountain men shook their heads. “Parlez vous français?” Shake. “Parla italiano?” Shake. “Habla español?” Shake. In desperation the hiker made one last attempt. “Nihongo-o dekimasuka?” Shake. Dispirited, the hiker moved on. One of the old guys said (in German), “Maybe we should learn a foreign language after all” whereupon the other replied (also in German), “Why? It didn’t help him any.” 😉

Day 267 – Taking a holiday

Today is, in fact, a holiday in Austria and after my long spell of intense work I am taking a day off from everything. Back tomorrow.

Day 248 – Just checking in

Two very full days of work–yesterday and today. So I’m just checking in because I undertook to write every day and it is important to me to do that. I wouldn’t say I’ve been incurious, but I haven’t been consciously practicing and can’t give any examples of being curious right now. There’s just too much going on.

Day 186 – Just checking in

I taught all day again yesterday and am rather tired. If I practice curiousity consciously today, good. If I don’t, also good. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

Day 182 – Halfway

Somehow half a year has passed since I started this blog on 1 September 2016. A lot about writing my daily posts has been important to me.

• The daily discipline has been great. It hasn’t always been easy to post every day. Sometimes it wasn’t even easy to remember every day to post. Nonetheless, I am pleased that so far I have managed it and so am motivated to keep at it.
• The knowledge that people are reading what I write. In fact, sometimes people even write or talk to me about what I have written, sometimes sending suggestions or making comments (or even sending books or CDs in response to something I’ve written :-)), sometimes just picking up on something going on in my life and checking in with me. That means a great deal to me.
• It turns out that writing this blog is, as I hoped, helping me practice curiosity more consistently. It keeps the topic near the forefront of my mind where I can act on it more often. It’s not perfect, as we have seen, but it is definitely helping.
• In some ways, this blog is also helping me be curious about curiosity in its different forms and practiced on different topics.

I am definitely looking forward to seeing what comes out of the next six months.

A huge thank you to my readers, especially those faithful ones who read more or less every day. I do not take that in any way for granted!