sense of doubt

Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #177 - Year end review and best blogs

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #177 - Year end review and best blogs

Hi Mom,

Welcome to the last day of 2015. I wish you were here to see it.

Today, I create and publish the 177th blog entry in this series, inspired by wishing to continue my conversations with you. 177 is just five posts shy of the halfway mark for the year. And, like with the T-shirts project, I do plan to stop at 365 posts, which will come not on the day you died a year later but on the second day following the day you died in this coming 2016.

At this time, I felt it would be a good idea to reflect on this avocation, to share some statistics of readership, and to choose the twenty best entries of the year thus far. I tried to restrict myself to top ten and could not.

Like with T-shirts, that came from my struggle to understand having cancer and coping with recovery from having cancer, this blog series originates with your death, Mom, but becomes more than a journal about grieving; it has become a journal about living. My intent is that by writing about the things I want to write about, I will show that I have moved on, or at least how I am trying to move on.

So far, it has been easier than I thought it would be. Liesel, especially, thought I would be completely broken by your death, despite my assurances that I was more prepared than she believed given all that we had been through with you, Mom, in the last fifteen years, but especially the original situation, the bacterial meningitis that changed all of our lives forever.

But by saying that the moving on, the continuing, the living has been "easier" than I thought it would be, this does not imply that it has been easy. I feel the loss of you every day, Mom. I find new ways to cope with that loss every day. My choices are not the choices that others would make, but this difference does not make my choices wrong. They are my choices. This is my grief.

And yet, this is also my life. As I noted, I did not want this blog to be a daily cant on how much I miss you and how I am struggling to move on with life that does not include you in it as a living person (because I do feel you strongly in my daily life as a spiritual entity). I could simply post 365 variations on the theme of "I miss you," but that's not what I am trying to do. The blog theme comes from the idea of continuing my daily conversations with you as I called you nearly every day over the last six years. And I think I have done very well with a variety of content. Yes, some of it is specifically about grief, some of it consists of memories of our life together, but some of it really has nothing to do with you at all, Mom, it's just something I want to write about, such as yesterday's book reviews and Tuesday's review of book one of the Dark Knight III - The Master Race comic book. I have spent a great deal of time and energy on keeping my content varied and not only of interest to you, Mom (more or less). but also to others who graciously share some of their time by peeking in on what I am doing with mine (my time, that is).

I have 188 of these entries left to write, and I am confident that I can keep up my standards and achieve some new things. Not all of the entries will be verbose or complex, many will be short comments on a picture, my continuing reports on our Scotland trip (Liesel's and mine), or reprinted content from my T-shirt series (which is the greatest cheat but in a way one of my chief joys), but I will continue to post content daily (except when I get behind) and think of you daily, Mom, whether I am writing about something that would interest you or something that interests me and you have to listen politely.

STATISTICS
In an overall glimpse, I have 266 posts on this blog, of which 177 are devoted to this enterprise of "Hey, Mom!" I have been blessed with 24, 847 page views, which is decent for a modest blog such as this one, but still trails the T-shirt blogs whopping 36,956 page views, though I suspect that come Hey Mom #365, I will match or exceed the T-shirts total.

My average seems to be around 30 some pages views a day with spikes of 100-150 on some days with some posts.

Current stats show page views today at 55, page views yesterday at 96, and page views for the month of December at 1,972. Granted, I generate a fair number of these views myself but I would say that subtracting 5-10% for my activity, the rest resemble mostly readers and not robots, from what I can tell.

My peak month since starting Hey Mom was August with 3053 page views followed by July with 2880 and October with 2240

The most popular recent post was the one from December 26th on Christmases from 2009-2015, which is a very special post indeed and will probably make the top ten. This post also ranks as number one for the last month.

In terms of all time ranks, my top ten most page views are mostly dominated by non-Hey Mom content. My number one post with 1024 page views is this one KEEPING MISOGYNY ALIVE AND WELL FOR GEEKS NATIONWIDE, which is about the Heroes TV show and its depiction of women in its first season. My second most popular post with 642 page views is this one:
THINGS THAT SUCK #2: PLEASE PREPAY IN ADVANCE, of which I am inordinately proud.
The next two with 213 views and 154 views respectively are also from the pre-Hey Mom period: BURGERS OR BOOTY and THE “New and Improved” INVISIBLE WOMAN: Does she look like she needs protecting?, which happens to be the first post I ever made on this blog (and the one about Heroes was number two).

Following this top four, number five with 102 page views and number six with 82 page views are two of my weekly comics posts: WEEKLY COMICS FOR 1404.16 -- which shared content on the Batman comic during the Riddler Year One saga, the conclusion of the Superior Spider-Man series, The Justice League featuring the Metal Men, "Who Shot Bruce Banner?" from 2014 issues of the Hulk, the Ms. Marvel reboot, and a few other comics -- and WEEKLY COMICS FOR 1405.21, which described recent TV shows and movies of comic book themes, along with reviews of Marvel's Original Sin #2, the conclusion of DC's Forever Evil, Image's Velvet #5, Daredevil #005, and Image's Saga #19 among a few others.

Finally, the first Hey Mom post -- New feature: Hey, Mom! Talking to my mother #1 - the explanation -- takes seventh place with 79 page views. I have added to this entry a few times and will probably add to it again, thus increasing the page views somewhat, but I think people are finding it from the top of the blog to better understand what I am doing.

One other pre-Hey Mom entry comes in at eighth before two Hey Moms close out the top ten.
With 74 page views, my Return of Doubt: Things that Suck scores eighth followed by Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #89 - Sixth wedding anniversary (65 page views) and Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #88 - 90 days and 88 blog entries (63 page views).

I am blessed to have readers. Thank you. And thank you, Mom, for inspiring it all and sitting patiently and listening when I go on about stuff you do not care all that much about.

MY TOP TWENTY HEY MOM POSTS SO FAR (thru 177)

There's actually twenty-one entries here because I had to include the first one, but it doesn't count towards the top twenty. I tried to avoid listing so many posts that deal with grieving, but a fair share of them deal with it because its been a constant issue for half a year now. I wanted to include one of the dreams posts and the second one is probably the best of three, despite Liesel's dream as feature of the third part. Post #83 may not be the best in terms of writing, but I love the picture from the post and have included it above. I tried to be choosy, and so I included only one post from the Memorial Service, and probably, my favorite story. But I did not include any posts from other series' I wrote, such as the seven songs sequence and the Traverse City trip group of posts. Early posts were all especially poignant, such as #s two, three, and fourteen. I like the pair #25 and #50 make between counting days and disbelief. But then, the majority of the posts in the second ten are about other subjects than my grief and the loss you, Mom, at least, that is, until Christmas. Still, this is a good list, and this post could serve as a good introduction to what I am doing. I am especially proud of the blog as a whole, but I am especially proud of these twenty entries.

New feature: Hey, Mom! Talking to my mother #1 - the explanation

Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #2 - last breath

Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #3 - "Don't be scared."

Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #14 - Meijer

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #20 - Memorial Service pt. 7 - Mints story

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #25 - Counting Days

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #50 - Disbelief

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #73 - Dreams part two

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #82 - Your Stuff

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #83 - LOL - not Laughing Out Loud

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #88 - 90 days and 88 blog entries

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #89 - Sixth wedding anniversary

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I am Christopher Tower the gmr

I am Christopher Tower (or Chris), and I am a writer of stuff. I grew up in Michigan; I now live in the Portland, OR metro area. I play Ultimate, ride a bike, and supposedly educate college persons while myself being educated in college. I am married with two kids, a beagle, a curly lab, and a fiesty pug/frenche mix. I like sushi. I love all SF, fantasy, comic books, D&D, board games, and Gnosticism. I am a Jungian. I am currently studying Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Walden University.

SENSE OF DOUBT STATUS AS OF 0705.04 - 16:45

Sense of Doubt is not currently dedicated to any themes or special interest. The subject matter is mine and may range from comic books to ultimate or from Baseball to feminist-centered media criticism. Until I feel I have enough content for multiple blogs, or until I am seized with a desire to create multiple blogs, this is it, and appropriately so. "Sense of Doubt" came about in Bowie’s Berlin period and the dark, ambient collaborations with Brian Eno. Like the Bowie of 1978, I have my own darkness that steals over me and through me, infecting everything. At the risk of sounding far too melodramatically obsessed with my own self-flagellations, this blog dedicates itself to that darkness, that infection. But it’s fun, too. Hey, I can be amusing? Or not. It’s the way of the [w]rench. Neurosis compelling action in insecure double-checking and misunderstanding evasions. It is my way.

More from the original description text that needed editing in 2015: Furthermore, Sense of Doubt is dedicated to the random. The theme is no theme. Just questions, doubt, and uncertainty. Feel the power of not knowing the answer. So dedicated on the last day of July 2006 by the Galactic Monkey Wrench.

The Galactic Monkey Wrench

This is the logo of the Galactic Monkey Wrench. I was given the nickname Galactic Monkey Wrench in college by a friend of mine who felt that I threw the monkey wrench into the cosmos at every available opportunity. Later, in discussions with my best friend, who is the Lord of Chaos (the Loc), he asked for my title and when I told him, without thinking, he blurted out "the gmr!" Since this was random and we appreciate randomness, I became the gmr, even though technically I should be the gmw. But gmw sounds like a car or some industrial manufacturing firm that makes a strange widget of which one has never heard. This acronym fetish may make no sense to anyone else, but my friend and I are quite driven to provide acronyms for many things. At the very least, it allows us to keep our conversations obscure and often private as no one knows about what we're talking.

Monkey Wrench Books

Chris's books

A Feast for Crows

by George R.R. Martin

This book is a little slower than the others. But if you become invested in this series, it provides key information about the history of Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea. It may not contain chapters with my favorite characters ...

A Game of Thrones

by George R.R. Martin

Do I really need to review this book? It's one of the best books I have ever read. Martin is a great writer. All the books are great, and I am loving my time rereading them. If you have not checked out these books, start here and get ready ...

The Golden City

by John Twelve Hawks

These books are immensely entertaining. Treat yourself to some strong writing, great action, compelling characters, and a mix of metaphysics and theology. The ending of this third book, which is presumably the last, is anti-climactic and so...

Pathfinder

by Orson Scott Card

This was a fun book. Not OSC's best but very good OSC nonetheless. The best thing about is the time travel, slowing, and speeding powers of the characters and how OSC engages the reader in discussion of causality and time paradox. For fans ...

Swamplandia!

by Karen Russell

This book came to me via my wife Liesel who discovered it and urged me to read it. Beautifully written with compelling characters and a sense of the magical (yet realistic, somewhat). Funny yet full of the pathos that marks a good if not gr...

Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #177 - Year end review and best blogs

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