This blog post is longer than you may have the patience for, but I hope you hang in there.

According to the writing assistant Grammarly, I am a writing machine and “have my eye on the prize.” The cloud-based program has already analyzed over 102.8 million of my words since the 2015 launch of my blog, and based on my 2024 writing style, Grammarly has also dubbed me “A Powerhouse.”

I wouldn’t call myself a powerhouse, but in the nine years since launching The Teri Tome, I have been blessed with almost two million readers and four million page views. And in 2024 alone, close to 200,000 readers visited my blog, and I sincerely appreciate every one of them.

But it was Grammarly’s assertion that “I had my eye on the prize” that got me thinking:

What prize am I eyeing?

Is it readership, page views, uplifting comments, book sales, personal satisfaction, or something else? I thought about this question for a while, and then it hit me.

The prize I’m eyeing is that years from now, someone might read my work or come across something I’ve written that moves them. It might be a poem, a blog post, or one of my books that connects them to me. And whether they knew me or not, I hope they spend some time thinking about who I was.

So, that’s the prize I have my eye on: that my writing will help ensure that I’m still lurking around somewhere long after I’m gone. And that maybe my words will go a long way to ensuring my legacy, one letter of the alphabet at a time. And speaking of time, at 71, I’m running out of it, so now, more than ever, I need to make every word count.

Writing is my life, and I cherish the process, including my disciplined daily routine, which involves several hours of intense wordsmithing. Only after a grueling day of writing do I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

When words and ideas come into my head, I feel compelled to instantly jot them down for fear of forgetting them. My writing pattern includes scribbling jumbled-up sentences in the dead of night that I often discover on my nightstand the following day, with no recollection of writing them in the first place. And those unconsciously and frequently illegible words usually result in countless hours of scrutinizing and deciphering.

I’ve set down snippets of written phrases on ink-bleeding tissues and napkins, and I’ve been known to occasionally scrawl all over my arms and hands when there was nothing else to write on. Because once a thought or idea gets stuck in my brain, I’m on a do-or-die mission to write it all out.

2024 wasn’t filled with as many blog posts as in prior years, primarily because I was busy writing two books!

And I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to highlight both of them here. (Please don’t judge me for being long-winded.)

My newest release, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline, just came out, although I’ve been writing it since 1967. The impetus for publishing it resulted from a rough conversation with my best friend about my sharing MeToo much, which triggered an onslaught of emotions. Well, maybe not an onslaught—just four.

At first, I was angry at her for hurting me, then I was angry at myself for being unable to control my mouth, followed by pride in myself for speaking out. The fourth emotion was more of a resignation—the knowledge that most people will never understand the why and how of MeToo and me.

Following that frank conversation, I took a critical look at myself, my MeToo pain, and my inability to shut up about it, which had me asking myself: When is MeToo too much?

The answer that immediately came to my mind is NEVER.

But now that I’ve finally published my book, Me Too: A Poetic Timeline—a compilation of journal entries I’ve been writing for fifty-seven years—I feel a renewed sense of myself. My MeToo book of poetry allowed me the freedom to speak my truth and gave me a sliver of peace—an infinitesimal sliver, but I’ll gladly take it.

During my 2024 process of going back in time, combing through five decades and hundreds of journal entries and poems, I realized that my MeToo life played out in four painful but definitive life-altering phases.

Phase One: Shut it

Phase Two: Whisper it

Phase Three: Scream it

Phase Four: Write it

And now, I’m hoping to get to the final phase—the one where I know MeToo will never be too much, but to a place where I can keep it to myself. Me and MeToo will always be one. You see, it’s at the heart of who I am.

At first, I thought the final phase would be like the phrase in the movie The Ten Commandments: “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

But now I realize that my Me Too nightmare will never be done, but at least now it’s written.

I published Tarot for Beginners this past summer. I’ll keep the description of this book plain and simple: It is a unique, fun, and quirky way to add some amusing entertainment to a social gathering.

Now, back to my 2024 blog posts. Having spent the past twelve months writing two books, I only wrote 24 blog posts in 2024, although I’m proud to say they generated approximately 120,000 page views.

Additionally, The Teri Tome garnered close to another 300,000 page views for posts written before 2024. That’s a whopping 420,000 for 2024, way more page views than I could ever have imagined when I launched my blog in 2015.

Let’s start with:

MY LEAST VIEWED POST IN 2024

CHIMERA: In analyzing my best and worst blog posts of 2024, I got chill bumps when I saw the date I wrote this one—4/18/24. It turned out that while I was writing this post about a nightmare I had at 3 am that morning, someone I once knew and loved was dying on that same day.

The chilling part is that I didn’t find out about the death until two months later, in mid-June. So, I can only assume that my dream was a sign, a vision, or a premonition on the day this person passed away.

While this post about an evil-looking, part-goat, part-lion-creepy-beast was my least viewed, it holds tremendous personal significance and meaning. That’s all I’ll say for now.

#1 HIT IN 2024

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY: ME TOO, UNLESS YOU’RE A JEW: I assume this blog post was number one primarily because I posted it on several Jewish forums. Without my Jewish readership, I am all but certain that this blog entry would not have been as widely read, which makes me incredibly sad but also outrageously mad.

Here in the U.S. and all around the globe, women’s groups ignored, denied, and actually justified the rape of innocent women and children on October 7. That feminist groups whitewashed Hamas’s crimes is unforgivable, particularly when considering this terrorist organization mandates the hijab, has made it illegal to travel without a male guardian, and refuses to ban physical or sexual abuse within the family.

And speaking only for myself, I will never forgive or forget those people who defaced posters of kidnapped innocent people or their spewing of anti-Semitic disinformation about Jews that has poisoned the minds of so many.

And it will be a cold day in hell before I ever again go out and defend the rights of certain people who cared nothing for the rights of Jewish Americans.

#2 HIT IN 2024

THE ITSY-BITSY SPIDER FIASCO: This number two blog post made me smile. In a year when I was deeply troubled by the social and political climate, it was refreshing to see that my attempt at comic relief paid off. And leave it to our precious kids to say the darnedest things.

#3 HIT IN 2024

NOVA MUSIC FESTIVAL: THE SCREAMING GIRL: Once again, I think my posting this blog entry on several Jewish forums is why it garnered so many page views and took the number three spot.

The Nova Music Festival Exhibition in New York City—an in-depth remembrance of the brutal October 7 attack in Israel—was a heartbreaking reminder of that horrific day when Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilian animals descended upon the rave and stalked, chased, massacred, raped, mutilated, and kidnapped innocent people.

Many of the Nova Music Festival survivors—especially the young women who witnessed or experienced sexual violence that day—have sadly recounted that over the past year, they feel like they are screaming into the void as they try to counter anti-Israel propaganda, antisemitism, and false, inaccurate misinformation online.

And I have to admit that I have kept my distance from my so-called friends for saying nothing—or worse—saying “but” in response to not only the sexual violence of October 7 but to the anti-Jewish protests that have been a disgusting, dangerous, and outrageous display of hate against Jewish Americans.

#4 HIT IN 2024

D-DAY JUNE 6, 1944: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER: My father-in-law is a hero in my eyes, so I was especially gladdened to see that my post about him made it to number four in 2024.

Just a year or so before storming the beaches of Normandy, he and my mother-in-law had arrived in the U.S. after a four-year odyssey through Europe in their effort to escape the Nazis.

He helped to liberate untold numbers of towns and villages in France, as well as untold numbers of fellow Jews in concentration camps and helped to keep freedom alive for all of us.

#5 HIT IN 2024

HE HAD ME AT HUMBLE: It dawned on me when this blog entry made it to number five that four out of my top five posts were about Judaism, Jewish teachings, Nazis, and Jewish atrocities.

I can only surmise that all of the antisemitism I have witnessed over the past year subconsciously affected and motivated what I wrote about.

This post is about the teachings of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, regarding the unimportance of one’s importance and how the moon serves as the perfect example of humility and humbleness.

The moon’s light is not its own—it is merely a reflection of the sun’s light. And so the moon reminds us to be a graceful receiver of our shining, beautiful light, which does not belong to us but to a higher authority.

THE NUMBER ONE VIEWED POST OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2024):

WEDDING CENTERPIECES THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD: For the past four years, this blog entry about wedding centerpieces (or the lack thereof) has been hands down my most-viewed post, garnering hundreds of thousands of page views. However, as the mother of a daughter who is getting married this June, I have come to the realization that florists will always win out over “in lieu of wedding centerpieces.”

As I said goodbye to 2024, I lost too many hours of sleep, fretting over the coming of 2025 and beyond. My New Year’s resolution was to remove my obsession with politics and all things Trump from my everyday life. And while I’m not a fan of Trump, my opinion of him will be forever changed and indeed elevated if he does right by Israel, the October 7 hostages, and Jewish Americans.

And lastly, my wish for you in 2025 is that you are in excellent health, surrounded by loving family and friends, and enjoy all the freedoms and rights we, as Americans, deserve.

I have been beyond thankful that over 15,000 people per month come to my blog, The Teri Tome, to read what I have to say.

Since launching The Teri Tome on 3/18/15, I’ve had over 1.4 million readers and over 3.2 million page views.

And I suspect some of those readers are deeply unhappy or nervously afraid about my postings or what I might post next.

But frankly, my dear…

Writing helps me make sense of life’s stuff. It’s like talking to myself but in written form.

Anyway, the marked increase in traffic to The Teri Tome has me writing like a crazy person. And for every written post I publish, you should know that I also write a post that is most definitely unpublishable — at least for now.

I’ve put all those unpublished posts in a safe place on my computer, so to my family, if you’re reading this: When the time comes that I am no longer, please carefully and thoroughly comb through my computer files. There is a treasure trove of everything you mostly didn’t know about Teri because you never asked. I can only hope that when I reach the other side, you will honor me and my memory by reading every word.

In 2023, I wrote 38 blog posts, resulting in over 200,000 collected page views for those posts alone. Additionally, The Teri Tome garnered close to another 200,000 page views for posts written before 2023.  And please don’t think I’m bragging, but that’s a whopping 400,000+ page views in one year.

Of the 38 posts, fifteen were chapters of my novel-on-a-blog, primarily written decades ago, titled: “My Stolen Diaries.” Speaking of my novel, I first started posting it on The Teri Tome on 1/12/20. To date, I have posted 97 of my book’s total 159 written pages. However, I will tell you a little secret: I still haven’t figured out the ending.

According to the writing assistant Grammarly, I’ve achieved grammar greatness — the cloud-based program has already analyzed over 63.2 million of my words since the 2015 launch of my blog. Per Grammarly, I was more productive than 96% of their users, 93% more accurate, 96% more unique words, and my top mistake? Missing commas.

And now for the big reveal.

My LEAST VIEWED POST IN 2023

MY DELTA WINGS: I’m constantly trying to figure out why some of my blog posts garner thousands of page views and others in the hundreds. Maybe it’s the title, maybe it’s the content, and maybe it’s both. Whatever the reason, this poem was my least-trafficked post in 2023, but I hope you give it a read because it’s very near and dear to me, mostly because at 20 years old, Delta Airlines freed me from my MeToo nightmare.

#1 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES — CHAPTER 16: IN OVER MY HEAD: I was pleasantly surprised to see that Chapter 16 was the #1 post of 2023. How many of us have been in over our heads? For years, I’ve asked myself, “What if this?” or “What if that?” which is what I was thinking about when I sat down to write this Chapter.

#2 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES — CHAPTER 23: SHE’S AN AWKWARD GIRL: The #2 spot honors another chapter of my novel-on-my blog. My Stolen Diaries is a work of fiction, but I know a thing or two about being awkward and being bullied for it. I’ve come to accept that were it not for my awkwardness and the bullies, I would not have had the empathy to write Chapter 23. My lead character, Tony, is shy but unafraid to speak the truth. And as of late, don’t think me crazy, but she often talks to me. Many readers have asked me if there is any truth to the fiction I write. I can only answer by saying that there is no fiction without truth.

#3 HIT IN 2023

MY DAUGHTER DREAM: The popularity of this #3 blog post didn’t surprise me at all because my unicorn daughter was the inspiration. When my daughter was around five, she told me she was my guardian angel, and oh yes, she is.

#4 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES —  CHAPTER 22: O HOLY NIGHT: I channeled the female solidarity of growing up in an all-women household when I wrote this chapter, so I’m happy to see it’s the #4 post of 2023. Those precious women taught me strength through adversity, and I will forever be grateful for their grit and resolve.

#5 HIT IN 2023

THINKING OF YOU TODAY: I was more introspective than happy about the popularity of this #5 post. And I was also a bit anxious because rereading it touched something raw in me. It also made me question if I should continue writing about my house of glass, pane by pain. For like a minute.

#6 HIT IN 2023

I SEE YOU: Just so you know, I’ve been second-guessing my writing purpose for a while now, so the popularity of this #6 post of 2023 left me nostalgic and longing for what was. And yet, I know deep inside that what was will never be again.

#7 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES — CHAPTER 25: THE TONY TELLING:
I wrote Chapter 25 in the late 80s while undergoing intense life-altering events. The fact that it made it to #7 and garnered so many page views in 2023 lifted my spirits and gave me the impetus to continue posting my novel no matter what or despite who.

#8 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES — CHAPTER 20: HELP!: Chapter 20 made it to the #8 spot and reminded me that I’ve been adept at helping but have never been one to ask for it. And yet, I still believe what is meant for someone will never pass them by.

#9 HIT IN 2023

MY STOLEN DIARIES — CHAPTER 15: ROBERTO, ROBERTO, ROBERTO: Although I wrote this chapter decades ago, I gave it a written facelift in 2023. I did so because I felt the need to expand the concept that our choices and decisions are often our undoing. We make our choices, and then our choices take over and make us. And then there are the choices made for us by someone else — a life shaped by decisions made by other people. How many of our lives are the consequences of a series of decisions made for us instead of by us? That’s how Chapter 15, my #9 hit in 2023, came to be.

#10 HIT IN 2023

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS: It was no surprise that this post made it to #10. In many belief systems, ten signifies completion — the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. Soon to enter my 71^st year here on earth, I can’t help but wonder, “Will this be the year my nightmare chapter ends?” So that you know, I can take a verbal hit better than most. And I’ve heartbreakingly closed life chapters I never wanted to end and will never forget. But I still haven’t figured out how to close that one ugly chapter I’ve spent fifty-six years trying to erase.

THE NUMBER ONE VIEWED POST OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2023):

WEDDING CENTERPIECES THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD: From 2015 to 2020, my all-time most-viewed post was about bullies and bullying behavior. I sadly equated it with the 2014 election and that certain powerful someone who, through his own ugly and hate-filled words, permitted bullies to crawl out of their holes. At the end of 2021, and at first analysis, I thought my blog post about brides beating out bullies was a positive outcome — a possible new world order. Mostly because I naively thought that fewer people needed to read about bullies — because perhaps fewer people were being bullied. But I have come to the sad realization that since 2020, it has become way more commonplace to bully and to be bullied. People no longer need to research or understand bullies and bullying, mainly because so many of us have been experiencing the hatefulness of it in real-time — day in and day out, with no one able or willing to stop it. So, for the past three years, weddings have far surpassed bullies as my number one most-viewed blog post, garnering hundreds of thousands of page views. Although it took me a while, I now sadly get the fact that weddings come and go, while hate only begets more hate.

And just like that, another year was over and done.

As I said goodbye to 2023, I also said goodbye to a childhood friend in mid-December. My dear friend was a particularly tough loss and the culmination of a sh*tstorm of a year.

2023 has often felt like a movie trailer to me. And while there was no spoiler alert, the preview and glimpse of the plot, characters, and tone, combined with nonstop political and anti-Semitic horrors, have done a relatively good job of keeping me up until the wee hours of the morning.

Like I needed anything more to add to my sleepless, restless nights.

I can only wish that 2024 brings all of us the plot twists we’re hoping for, although there is no doubt that some of us will be apoplectic.

I sure hope it’s not me.