Confession time. I am writing this post over a year ahead of time. We haven’t even had the ninth anniversary of Meerkat Musings, and here I am, writing about the 10th!

Why pull the trigger on writing the post now? That’s simple, because I can. I have a whole year to reminisce and reflect upon a decade of Meerkat Musings. Considering all the milestones, events, torment and fun in that time, it may take a year to do the post justice!

In the Beginning…

My earliest post to this site, called ‘It’s Alive‘, went live on the 6th of August, 2014, at 7.20pm, so it is only fitting that this post goes live at the same time. The Wayback Machine has archived the style of the site from that era, albeit the first post is not available to view in that original theme. I cannot call my first post especially memorable; it’s only distinguishing quality is that it’s the first post!

The early days of Meerkat Musings saw a lot of retail rants. There were a few posts on the subject of weird dreams. I wrote about Formula 1, and went off on political commentary. The subject of Nintendo popped up a fair bit as well. In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same! However, back in those early days, I developed pages for the site, alongside blog posts. Those pages remain in place, though these days I’ll turn a blog post into a page of sorts.

I was fairly prolific with my posting, as I have tended to be throughout the life of this blog. There were some quieter spells, but by-and-large, I’ve put together a lot of posts. Good luck to anyone who one day decides to study the thoughts and words of this greymuzzle!

Early-on, I pushed my site and my writing via some forums I was (and still am) a member of. Stardestroyer.net, BigFooty.com and Starfleetjedi.net all contributed a fair few viewers in that first year. My most popular page/post was on The Terminator Saga. I guess people enjoyed reading my take on killer robots! The UK, USA and Australia formed the top three contributors to my readership, if we look at it by country.

The First Full Year

2015 was a hectic, somewhat turbulent year for me, that involved changing jobs, and therefore having to re-find my feet a little. Nonetheless, I wanted to devote time to the blog, and I managed to keep going, and to keep growing. I kept a running commentary of the 2015 Formula 1 season, and I bubbled with anticipation over the release of The Force Awakens! My most popular post/page was on the late, great Ayrton Senna, whilst Google steered more visitors in my direction than any other individual medium.

Facebook and Twitter provided the second and third-most views, which was probably a reflection of how I was using social media to get my voice heard. The UK and the USA remained first and second for visits by country, but Brazil took a surprising third place.

The Biggest Year

2016 remains the busiest year for Meerkat Musings. 2016 is also the year when, together with a few like-minded individuals, I set up The Coalition of the Brave, a site intended to discuss social concerns. I dare say there was some cross-pollination going on, with hopping back and forth between there and here. In 2016, I began to quite openly discuss stuff like feminism, and religion, here on Meerkat Musings, which as you can probably guess, led to some attention. One of my posts, ‘Bakers, the KKK and the False Dilemma‘, proved quite popular. It examined the misleading narratives that homophobes will set up in order to seem intelligent, even when in reality they were employing a dishonest rhetoric trick. Alas, I would come to have many a ‘discussion’ with the author of that particular piece, and ultimately, none of them would bear fruit.

I would also fall into discussions with another individual, and like my conversations with the author of Blogging Theology, my conversations with the author of Theology Archaeology would prove fruitless, continued only because for a time, they were stimulating, even if I should have realised back then how pointless it would be. Perhaps I argued and debated because I enjoyed it. Perhaps I hoped to successfully challenge bigotry. Either way, eventually I learned to move past it all.

What else happened in 2016? Oh yes, the self-inflicted wound of Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. I cannot speak for everyone, but I will speak for myself when I declare those two events to both be absolutely, insanely stupid.

Once again, Google was the single biggest supplier of visitors, with Twitter and the WordPress.com Reader next on the list. Getting attention via WordPress was important, for it meant I was, in effect, ‘networking’.

The Political Rollercoaster

So, in 2017 we had the start of a turbulent, chaotic time across the Pond, with Donald Trump getting the keys to the White House. In the UK, we grabbled with how to take a terrible idea in Brexit, and somehow make it work. I would post quite extensively on these subjects (though more so at the Coalition site, where I found myself in regular discourse with a rather angry individual), but on Meerkat Musings, I devoted some time to one of my happiest pursuits: roaming Hyrule on Breath of the Wild.

The single most popular post in 2017 was an article I wrote on Sexism in Thailand. It received 233 views, as opposed to the runner-up (my Star Trek vs Star Wars page), on 136 views.

Google continued to be the biggest means of gaining visitors, steering 987 views towards Meerkat Musings. The WordPress Reader, Twitter and Facebook formed the next three places, but even taken together, they did not match Google’s numbers.

By now, I had a few regular commentators. Among them, there was (and still is) my friend Ariel Lynn, of Writing Radiation. Rae, of Bookmark Chronicles, is another long-time friend from my blogging, and Paul, of The Captain’s Speech, has provided entertainment beyond measure down the years. There are many others, and I will mention more names during the course of this post!

Oh, 2017. The UK provided the most views, but was only just ahead of the USA, with the Philippines in a distant third.

On a more personal note, 2017 saw a family getaway to Scotland during the summer. This happened to be for a wedding, and it took us to the Highlands, for what was a simply fantastic trip.

Did I mention a trip to a whisky distillery?

2017 ended with a career change, and the start of a challenge.

Grinding Away

At some stage in 2017 or 2018, I switched the comments to the platform Disqus, only to switch back after a short while. It was one of the biggest ‘shake-ups’ to my site, but it was also rather unsuccessful, in my view, and restoring the regular commenting format was definitely the right way to go.

During 2018, I found myself trying to find my feet in a sales environment that was a fairly big departure from what I had been comfortable in. I don’t mind admitting that at times, it all felt a bit overwhelming, and I felt… squeezed. I am who I am, except the powers that be wanted to mould me into something else, and I didn’t particularly want to be squashed into a box. If I am honest with myself, conformity to the structure and to the particulars of what I had to sell didn’t mesh with how I felt sales should be conducted. In hindsight, this wasn’t a natural fit for either party.

We got away for a week in the middle of 2018, to a holiday park in Dorset. Here, we saw Corfe Castle, and did a little bit of exploring around the town of Poole.

Despite that ‘behind the scenes’ stress, I continued to blog quite regularly. I’m struggling to recall the big news stories of 2018, and my most successful blog posts don’t reflect any big events. Interestingly, my most popular post in 2018 is a post that I either took down, or it was something to do with forum sign-ups. The entry in the log simply says ‘not found’, but it had 384 views. My post about iGP Manager and the Australian GP was the runner-up, on 357 views, and Sexism in Thailand was third, on 313 views.

Google was once again the top contributor to my viewership, with 1,590 referrals, comfortably clear of Facebook, on 207 referrals, and Twitter, on 171. The USA, UK, and in a surprising third place the Netherlands, were the three top referrers by country.

Forging New Ground

2019 was a year that would see me take my first steps towards becoming a published author, though I didn’t know that at the time! I continued to plug away at sofa sales, but that feeling of discomfort, of difficulty, it never left me.

Some stuff happened on a pretty personal level that had me seriously peeved with my boss at the sofa place, for what I regarded as his failure to understand would should be a cardinal rule of life, namely that family always comes before work. However, I had to plug away to ensure I was providing for my wife and daughter, and thus, I carried on, despite not being especially happy in that environment. That didn’t stop me from having a couple of interviews though. One was for a bank, however I didn’t get the role, and to be honest, I wasn’t too disappointed by this. I don’t think the role was for me, even if it was technically slighter closer to home.

We had another getaway, this time to a place called Potters, near Great Yarmouth. One of the best moments was when my daughter and my nephew walked hand-in-hand, a nice little bonding moment for the pair of them!

2019 was a big year for film and TV, featuring big films like Avengers: Endgame, the final season of Game of Thrones (the less said about the better), and the remake of The Lion King. Let’s not forget The Rise of Skywalker either, or Cats… though I’d rather forget Cats. Needless to say, this material got a fair bit of airtime on my blog!

The conclusion of 2019 saw me meet with my former boss from my bathroom-selling days, to have a chat around working together again. This role would involve accepting lower earning potential, but in exchange, I’d have a much shorter walk to work, and less stress. I’d come to realise (after two years of a rather pressurised environment) that I did not enjoy my sofa-selling job. It is however, an interesting twist of fate that, whilst at the pub with my manager from my office supply/computer-selling days, I had a call from my then-current boss to confirm I’d passed my probation period, having very recently had an interview that would lead to me leaving!

In terms of site stats, a bunch of posts I’d written about iGP Manager were the top-ranked posts for the year, whilst Google, Twitter and the WordPress Reader were the biggest referrers. Facebook had been pushed down to fourth! The USA, UK, and once again the Netherlands, were the biggest referrers by country.

The Upheaval

2020 began with a few weeks where I finished up selling sofas, then took up my new role, working at a different, nearby store, whilst the local store was refitted. My current employers are quite happy to use existing sites wherever possible, which makes sense, and it so happened that the local site for me was the local location of my former bathroom employers (albeit I didn’t work in that branch). There was a brief period where my colleagues and I were involved in helping to clean the store, which meant some very long days, but then, in February 2020, we were ready to rock and roll!

Or were we? At the end of 2019, there had been stories in the news about an outbreak of a virus in China, and come March 2020, the virus – covid-19 – had made its way to British shores. I wrote, at some length, about the uselessness of the Tories in handling the pandemic, and I also lamented the panic-buying that left supermarket shelves stripped bare.

As of the 24th of March, we entered lockdown, and if what I wrote at the time was right, this was intended to be for three weeks. Boy oh boy did that change.

I tried my hand at art, much to the fear of my loved ones! I dabbled in short stories. I complained about the weather.

I continued to work on the story I’d started whilst bored at my sofa job. This was a particularly important creative outlet for me, and I found myself writing a lot more to the story than I’d imagined I’d manage. I asked my brother to help me edit it, and once I’d returned to work full-time (on the 1st of August, marking a much longer three weeks than imagined!) I self-published the original version of The Awakening.

By this point, I’d started my Meerkat Muse – my bi-weekly summary of the events of my life – which began on the 2nd of September. The Muse has become a regular fixture here, and eventually, I’ll tidy up and update the Muse page with all the extra entries!

2020 did deliver something incredibly special, even beyond publishing a book. Liverpool FC, my beloved team, won the English league title for the first time since 1990. Needless to say, I marked the occasion!

I’d gone back to work in August, and for a time, the world began to feel vaguely normal again, but as we’ll see, by the end of 2020, things had taken a turn…

Statistically, 2020 was the second-busiest year in Meerkat Musings history, and a new post hit top spot for views (if we ignore the homepage). My Mass Transit post was number one, whilst my profile on grizzled ol’ Emperor Palpatine was second. Google remained by far and away the biggest source of referrals, with the WordPress Reader taking second place, and Google Mail taking a surprising third, ahead of Twitter. The USA, UK, and the Netherlands continued to be the top three referrers by nation.

Lonely Days and Epic Quests

The first few months of 2021 were dominated by another covid lockdown. My then-manager and I manned the store, in cold conditions, in order to be available to help traders, and to field phone calls, but we couldn’t actually permit anyone to browse the showroom. We also had occasions where we’d lone-trade, as we were entitled to days off, and thus, when I was at the store on my own, things could feel quite lonely indeed!

I got by via blogging, and at home, I played a fair bit of Football Manager 21. I also had my eye on a prize.

My goal was to get The Awakening – by now a self-published book – turned into a fully-fledged, published-by-a-publisher novel. I reached out to a few publishers, and heard back from one, namely Jumpmaster Press. It goes without saying that attracting the interest of a publisher was a huge boost for me, and whilst the work to edit the story felt arduous, it was definitely worth it!

As covid restrictions began to wind down, we took some family time to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, an entertaining show, if not among my personal faves. I continued my Meerkat Muse diary, and by now I had connected with the lovely and charming Bruce Gerencser, and I also made a point of getting dressed up for Halloween, albeit in one of the most unwieldy costumes imaginable!

2021 was a relatively quiet year for Meerkat Musings. I’d started a forum, but whilst it still exists, it’s never taken off. The forum page saw 74 views, and the What I Think and Welcome to Meerkat Musings pages were second and third, with 67 and 60 hits respectively. Google remained the chief means by which people found me (732 referrals), and quite a bit of traffic came my way from Bruce Gerencser’s site. The USA was the top nation in terms of referrals, with 1,496 of them, followed by the UK on 1,247, and China on 300.

Post-Pandemic Normality?

There are elements to 2022 that were very painful, and there are elements that are quite wonderful. I do not wish to dwell on the bad, so let’s look at the good.

The early part of 2022 saw the beginning of the end for the odious toad Boris Johnson as a political force. It had transpired that under his stewardship, employees of the Conservative Party had indulged in various law-breaking gatherings during the pandemic, and he himself had been involved in some of them. Whilst Johnson gamely clung to power a while longer, it was becoming clear that he was now a lame-duck PM, and even his staunchest supporters were struggling to defend him.

In terms of work, things were more or less back to normal, save for a bout of covid for me personally, which in that early part of 2022 knocked me for six.

2022 brought something that my wife, daughter and I had not personally experienced since 2014: a trip abroad. We went to Menorca with my parents, brother, his wife and their kids. We had a lovely little villa for a week, experienced some great food, and soaked up some glorious summer sun. We also had the quirky experience of landing back in England to heat similar to that which we’d left. Normally we’d land to much cooler weather!

The time spent there was lovely, and I would happily go back!

Halloween delivered yet another weird and wonderful costume, and yet another costume that was difficult to see out of!

2022 was poignant for me. It marked 10 years since my beloved Nan passed away, and 25 years since we said goodbye to my wonderful Grandad. I often question myself as to whether I honour their memory. I hope I do.

2022 also saw the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a moment in history that was quite surreal. I have mixed feelings about the Royal Family, but I was saddened by the Queen’s passing, for I felt she had quietly held herself to high standards of dignity and public service, for so very long, and she had become a fixture of British life, having reigned for so long. It had become almost inconceivable that she would one day leave this mortal coil.

The end of October brought some exciting news for me. Following the editing process, my book, The Awakening, was published by Jumpmaster Press! At that moment, I could officially call myself a traditionally-published author! This was an incredible milestone for me, and I am very proud to have reached it!

The year ended as it began, with a bout of covid, and it also saw a plan… but first, what of the burning question of site stats?!

2022 was busier than 2021, by a comfortable margin, across every metric. The most popular individual post was Defiance and Logic, followed by my post on The Awakening.

The USA contributed the most visits to Meerkat Musings, accounting for 3,827 visits. The UK was a distant second place, with 964, and Canada an even more distant third on 249. Most visitors found me via the WordPress reader, overtaking Google, albeit it marginally (412 versus 402). A lot of people came to me via Google Mail, and Bruce Gerencser’s site continued to provide a steady stream of visitors.

The Quest for 365

I mentioned how 2022 ended with another bout of covid. As we rolled into 2023, and under the haze of the virus, I set about with something I’d tentatively started: my Writing Prompts series. My goal was to post at least once a day, every day, in 2023, taking weird and wonderful prompts and ideas, and spinning them into blog posts. Following a somewhat generic ‘Happy New Year‘ post on the 1st of January, I began my series in earnest on the 2nd. The opening gambit was about strange, old words. Tittynope, anyone?

As the year wore on, I found myself full of contemplation at work, with things changing and shifting, as they so often do, though I dare say I also wielded my true capabilities, delivering the sort of performances that I had always had in me. I just needed a wee push to produce them. My wife, daughter and I had a brief but pleasant week away in Great Yarmouth (the weather held up nicely for us), and this included an amazing slice of luck!

2023 delivered joy and sadness. There were two weddings, both for cousins of mine, who happened to be brothers, and they sadly lost their mother at the start of the year. She was an incredible woman, and it is such a shame she did not get to see her boys get married. She is sorely missed. The weddings were wonderful, and I am certain she would have been enormously proud of her sons, and their new spouses.

Over the course of the year, we attended a comic-con event, where I took part in a bid to break a world record for the most people in Zelda cosplay in any one place. Alas, we fell short, but it was fun to have a go! This effort coincided with the release of Tears of the Kingdom, a brilliant game that kept me occupied for some time!

I mentioned some good luck, and this came in the form of bingo whilst on holiday. My wife and I do not consider ourselves to be lucky people, and my daughter is too young to play, so we wound up with two tickets, in a game being played against not only the other residents of the holiday park, but against the guests of every other holiday park belonging to this particular company. Our expectations were low, but to cut a long story short, we won! Our prize was a weekend break to a lodge in December!

Along the way, I continued with my daily posts. I discussed my favourite shoes. I wrote about angry customers. The Titanic’s sister ships came up as a topic. The subject of child discipline served as yet another prompt. The Mandela Effect was another curious topic of conversation. I could go on, but I’d drown this particular post!

I hit my goal of posting at least once a day in 2023, and I also set up a second book for pre-order, Fontana & Istilor!

So, how did Meerkat Musings fare in 2023? There were 6,183 views, from 2,788 visitors. This represented growth from 2022, which was quite satisfying! The most popular individual post was about the Honorverse, which I hadn’t expected. In second place was my character profile of the sinister Emperor Palpatine! Third was my post about The Awakening, so it was attracting some attention.

Google was, somewhat unsurprisingly, the chief route by which people found Meerkat Musings. Not only did the search engine contribute 810 visits, Google Mail was second, with 723, and the WordPress Reader was a distant third, with 439 contributions. In terms of nations, the USA led the way for visits, with 3,923, absolutely crushing the UK, which was on 693. China was on 236, just edging out Singapore (229).

So, after a busy year, we entered 2024, the tenth year of Meerkat Musings!

The Big Mark

When I started Meerkat Musings, I never imagined all it would lead to, and all the connections I’d make. In some respects – in fact in many respects – the existence of Meerkat Musings gave me the opportunity to write not one but two books, and thus set me down the path of becoming an author. I wound up becoming friends with some great people, and I’ve had the chance to show my evolution as a person too. I haven’t laid everything bare, but I’ve gone from Darth Timon, to being Ben Berwick. Of course, I’ve been liberally peppering Meerkat Musings with meerkat art (yes, it’s via AI, I freely admit that) over the past couple of years, thus fully embracing my meerkat self!

2024 is about a lot more than the website turning 10. This is the year that my wife and I celebrate 15 years of marriage, but we’ve been together for 20 years this year. As with all couples, we’ve had ups and downs, but despite my stupidity, we have persevered.

Over the span of Meerkat Musings, I’ve told the story of myself and my family. I’ve regaled you all with my experiences. Stories of love, sorrow, anger, surprise, suspense, and the occasional playful innuendo have all graced the blog. In the 10th year of proceedings, I have finally learned something particularly important: how to let go. Negative influences have been largely removed. I have learned to refrain from knee-jerk responses to posts from others that have in the past, wound me up. Occasionally you might see a riposte to something someone has said elsewhere, but I want Meerkat Musings to be filled with my content, not my responses to other people’s.

Away from the site, 2024 has already been a busy year. At the end of March, my wife, daughter and I joined my parents and my brother’s family for a brief Easter getaway in Norfolk:

May saw a lot of activity, particularly at the end of the month, with a number of events to mark my daughter’s birthday:

To call this spell crazy is an understatement. Three trips to London five days certainly took its toll! I wrote about that insanity, and more, here!

As we rolled into June and then on to July, I was able to write of changing political tides, with the woeful Tories finally succumbing to their arrogance and being completely crushed at the General Election on the 4th of July. I bit my nails at England’s fraught, difficult displays at Euro 2024, where we somehow kept getting lucky. Every now and then, I enjoyed the warmer weather, only for that weather to be repeatedly punctured by rain.

All of this would take us to the magic moment, where Meerkat Musings became ten years old! Wow, just wow. Here’s to the next ten years, and thank you to all my faithful readers, you mean the world to me.

I’ll sign off this post not with more excessive ramblings, but rather, with a video! I hope you enjoy, and once again, thank you.