Category Archives: The Teri Tome – Top Hits and Duds

The Teri Tome–My 2021 Hits and Misses

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If anyone would have told me when I first launched The Teri Tome back in 2015 that I would be writing this post while holed up in my house waiting for a pandemic surge to peak…

Well, you know the answer to that one.

Last January, which seems like eons ago, I had myself convinced that this “thing” would be over by mid-2021, so by summer, I was trying to get back to some semblance of a new normal.

But then came November, and it was Groundhog Day all over again. An unwelcome repeat of a repeat of a repeat.

As someone with an addictive personality, it’s not good to have so much time on my hands, so thank God I love to write.

And although a part of me cringes when I go back and read some of my more personal posts, I can’t stop baring myself.

It’s my only relief—my only way up and out. A written record of Teri that I don’t want to write, but it practically writes itself.

And anyway, what the hell else do I have to do with my time?

2021 was one big stay-at-home blur for me. I went to Target once, the food store three times, and out to eat eight times. I saw my sister twice and the grandkids four times. Those visits with the grandkids were for sure the only thing that kept me going over those twelve long and mostly solitary-except-for-my-husband months.

I had a severe case of writer’s block back in 2020 and then couldn’t stop writing in 2021.

I was obsessively writing it all out—I mean like 24/7, and yet I only published 17 blog posts in 2021. And while those 17 posts collectively amassed over 60,000 page views, the bulk of my Teri musings remained unpublished and will probably never see the light of day.

Ironically, the posts that brought in all the eyeballs—over 500,000 page views—were written way before 2021. I gained a bunch of new readers in 2021, so I’m relieved my lack of recent material didn’t affect the traffic to my blog.

Anyway, here are my top three best-performing blog posts from 2021. I threw in the blog post with the fewest views because I’m hoping you’ll read it.

And since the older posts brought in most of my traffic, I’ve included the #1 hit of all Teri Tome time (2015-2021).

I’ll start with the blog post hardly anyone clicked on in 2021:


He Was Arrested for Alleged Sexual Abuse: This post garnered over 1,000 page views in 2021, but I was discouraged that it wasn’t as widely read as I wanted or thought it should be. Perhaps it’s because the MeToo movement is still a misunderstood and struggling work in progress, just like me.       

And now for my Top Three 2021 posts:

#1 HIT IN 2021


My Stolen Diaries – Chapter 7: A New School With a Side of Baptism: To be honest with you, I wrote this back in 1992—pulled from my unfinished novel titled My Stolen Diaries, which I’ve been writing ever since. I hope that the thousands of hits that this 29-year-old chapter garnered will give me the push I need to keep posting the book on my blog.

#2 HIT IN 2021


The Pam Project: I was thrilled to see that this post about my cousin Pam garnered over 10,000 page views. In honor of Pam, I have been building and furnishing a dollhouse for a most remarkable young lady in California. And this post is still in the works because I’m just now finishing it up. I can’t wait to share the final photos of the happy home with my readers, but mostly looking forward to making a beautiful little girl smile.

 #3 HIT IN 2021


Dinner Party Playlist: This blog post is different from anything I have written. It’s a part playlist, part Teri history, and part fond memories of my late great musical mentor Sally White of Westport, Connecticut.   

#1 HIT OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2021)


Wedding Centerpieces that Can Save the World: My #1 blog post of all time (2015-2021) is about wedding centerpieces that could save somebody’s world. I was ecstatic to see that for the first time since the 2015 launch of The Teri Tome, my “Bullies Are Cowards” post did not take the #1 spot. At almost 300,000 page views, I wonder how many brides actually took my advice?

So much for 2021.

My 2022 New Year’s resolution is to leave 2021 behind, but most importantly, to leave my house! And 2022 might just be the year that my FOE (fear of everything) gets resolved. I want my FOMO back!

I want to wish my readers a happy, healthy, and safe New Year.

And I also hope that 2022 brings you wellness, equality, and political peace.

The Teri Tome–My 2020 Hits and Misses

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I can’t believe my blog, The Teri Tome, is five years old already. Wow, those years flew by way too fast.

Sitting here writing this blog post, I’m trying to remember back to 2015, and sadly, nothing earth-shattering is coming to mind.

Maybe it’s because my memory is shot, or maybe it’s because, in 2020, life interrupted my recollection of anything pre-covid.

And okay, maybe I sound like Trump when I say: Covid, covid, covid. Covid, covid, covid.

Stick me in the arm with the vaccine already!

I’m sure you would all agree that 2020 was a lot to deal with. Okay, it was a dystopic sh**storm. And I’m happy to say buh-bye to all 366 days of it. (2020 was a leap year, remember?)

But, to be fair, it hasn’t been all bad. Forty-three long weeks in quarantine has taught me a lot about myself and my definition of essential.

In the early months of 2020, I considered it my lost year.

Until I realized that 2020 was the year I found myself. I’m a changed and hopefully better person than when I naively rang in 2020.

I’ve questioned the fundamentals of “normal,” and going back to my pre-covid life as my pre-covid self isn’t an option.

Just to be clear, I haven’t locked myself down for the past ten months because I’m afraid covid’s gonna get me.

My reason for living like a hermit all these months is simple. Without my family and close friends, I have no reason to venture out.

Let me break down my pre-covid routine for you:

My standing nail salon appointment: I’ve perfected my mani-pedi skills, and my nails have never been healthier.

My monthly haircut and color: I’ve become adept at trimming my hair, and I’m okay with going grey.

Grocery shopping: I always despised shopping for groceries, so having them delivered works for me.

Clothes and shoe shopping: 2020 was the year I wore schlumpf clothes 24/7. Schlumpf is a thing. Look it up in the Urban Dictionary.

Going out to restaurants: Sitting outside in the brutal heat or the freezing cold is not my idea of fine dining. If I can’t go to Peter Lugar’s in style, I’ll wait until I can.

The last time I filled my car with gas was early February 2020, and March 7 was the last time I left my house. (Except for my flu shot and three doctor visits.)

March quickly morphed into July, then September, followed by non-Thanksgiving, non-Chanukah, non-Christmas, and non-New Year’s Eve.

And please don’t judge me, but during my endless months in quarantine, I found solace in all things 1:12 scale. Okay, I’m more like obsessed.

There were too many 2020 days when I wanted to miniature myself small enough to move into my newly renovated dollhouse.

When my head wasn’t stuck in a dollhouse, I baked some killer bread, grew potted veggies and herbs on my patio, spic-and-spanned my house, socially distanced in my frosty garage, and created some awesomely impressive meals.

And my fingers to elbows have never been cleaner! I’ve been singing the ABCs and Happy Birthday in my inside voice at least fifty times per day.

In 2020 I binged on mindless reality shows I would never have otherwise wasted my time on. Awful shows like 90-Day Fiancé (so creepy) and Married at First Sight (so desperate).

2020 was also the year I could barely string together a sentence because I developed a severe case of writer’s block!

And whenever I wrote, it was forced and mostly dark, which is why I’m only going to bore you with my Top Five blog posts instead of my Top Ten.

And okay, I’ll throw in the worst blog post of 2020 as well as the best of all time (2015-2020).

I do owe you full disclosure: Of my 32 total posts in 2020, I wrote seven of them eons ago—pulled from a novel titled My Stolen Diaries that I’ve been writing since 1992.

And shocking to me was that when I calculated the traffic numbers for my 2020 Top Five blog posts, four of them were from that ancient rough draft novel.

It turned out my most popular blog posts were less of a post-mortem on what Teri was writing in 2020 and more about what Teri was writing in the 90s.

The Teri Tome generated over 300,000 page views in 2020, a whopping 47% increase from 2019, primarily due to my novelog My Stolen Diaries, so I’m pleased.

I’ll start with the worst blog post of 2020:

#1 WORST IN 2020 

I Tried to Save a Cat’s Life Yesterday: I was sorry to see that this blog post was a loser. I still haven’t gotten over that poor pregnant cat. And I’m not sure that anything can be done about it, but we have way too many feral cats in my North Woodmere, New York neighborhood.      

And now for my Top Five 2020 posts:

#1 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Two: To Know Yourself Is to Know Your Family : I was dumbfounded to see that a chapter from my rough draft novel was numero uno. It took me a while to figure out a format for excerpting from my decades-old unfinished book. When I finally settled on calling it a Novelog (novel-in-a-blog), I put up a Disclaimer and six chapters. I was reasonably sure they would all bomb. The thousands of hits that this 28-year-old Chapter Two garnered made my heart happy.

#2 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Four: The Yellow Kitchen Table: Wow, so this was also a thrill for me! Another chapter of my dusty old novel? To be honest,  I almost didn’t post this chapter for reasons I won’t disclose. But I have no regrets.

#3 HIT IN 2020

2020 Cedarhurst Sidewalk Sale: I Was Fired for Seeking the Truth: Getting fired from my job as Executive Director of the Cedarhurst Business Improvement District for refusing to put people’s lives at risk during a pandemic was devastating. But I’m glad my post reached thousands of visitors, and I hope it continues to attract tons of traffic. I miss my job, but I don’t miss the Village of Cedarhurst’s political posturing, the lies, the misinformation, or the bullying. And I’m still weighing whether or not to sue the Deputy Mayor of Cedarhurst for defamation.

#4 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Five: My First Diary: The first thing I thought when I added up the numbers and saw that the #4 spot was yet another chapter of my book—was that maybe, just maybe, my languishing novel has legs!

#5 HIT IN 2020

My Stolen Diaries – Chapter Six: Tit: Another chapter of my book! And BTW, Tit is the nickname for a bully character in my novel. And the thousands of people this chapter reached gave me new resolve to pull out that book and take a fresh look at it.

#1 HIT OF ALL TERI TOME TIME (2015-2020)

Bullies Are Cowards and Why I Refuse To Turn the Other Cheek: I have a lot to say about this one. Year after year, this post, written in 2015, continues to outperform all the others, and to date, has garnered almost 550,000 page views. And year after year, I’m thankful for the blog traffic, but the fact that “bullies” is my number one keyword says volumes about our world’s character. And as history has shown us, there are way too many psychopathic bullies out there. And from my personal experience, someone with a psychopathic personality disorder will almost always display some sort of mental illness and or narcissistic derangement. As far as I’m concerned, all three conditions are little more than a convenient label for crackpots and social deviants who over-estimate and exaggerate their abilities, status, intelligence, and looks.

In reviewing my 2020 hits and misses, as well as my top post of all Teri Tome time, I’m excited about highlighting more chapters of my novel on my blog.

And 2021 might even be the year I finish it!

I want to wish my loyal readers a Happy New Year. I hope that 2021 brings you wellness and equality, plus all the hopes and dreams you thought would happen in 2020.

And I can’t wait to see what 2021 holds for the new and improved Teri.

Stay tuned!

The Teri Tome – My 2019 Hits and Misses

The Teri Tome - Top Hits and Duds,

I launched my blog The Teri Tome on March 18, 2015, and for those of you who are regular readers, you know that the things I write about run the gamut from personal to political to fiction and anything in between.

And even though The Teri Tome is almost five years old, the angst over whether to click “POST” and shoot my writings through cyberspace has never diminished.

I was recently asked by a friend to sum up 2019 in one word, and my first thought was: POST.

Of all the words I could have come up with, POST was what came to mind.

I guess because everything I do these days always comes back to:

“I’m so going to post a blog about this…”

Whether it be the mundane, the insane, the ridiculous, the heartbreak…

I can’t stop posting. Even when I know it’s not in my best interest.

Every Sunday, I go to the backend of my blog and check out my page views by post for the week.

And it never fails, that I am always shocked at the results.

The posts I hope will be a “Hit” are usually not.

Don’t get me wrong, I always go into my writing frenzy, with the thought in mind that whatever I write will in all probability be a miss.

It’s the only way I can go through the exhausting routine without getting my hopes up that people will like my work, and then being disappointed.

Hit or miss, I write anyway.

And I’m not trying to cry a river but writing a blog post takes a ton of time and energy.

Particularly the posts that are not in my best interest. Those are the most challenging and difficult to write. They take added effort and stamina, but they mostly take courage and a grueling mental toll.

So today being Sunday, I checked out the hits and misses, not only for the week but for all of 2019.

At the end of last year, I put together the Top Hits and Duds of 2018, which included the best and worst of all Teri Tome time (2015-2018).

For 2019, I thought I would change it up a bit.

I wrote 36 blog posts in 2019, so I decided to highlight the top two hits and the number one miss.

And since I took the time and effort today to analyze my best and worst posts of all time (2015-2019), I might as well share the top two hits so that today’s analysis wasn’t a complete waste.

The 36 posts I wrote in 2019 generated over 140,000 page views, which I suppose is okay.

I say okay, because in 2018, I only wrote 18 posts and had close to the same number of page views, so for 2019, double the posts did not equate to double the views. Not even close.

Oh well, let’s hope for better results in 2020.

I’ll start with the worst miss of 2019:

#1 MISS 


MY STOLEN DIARIES: A NOVELOG: Okay, to be fair, I only wrote this blog post one week ago, so it will take some time for it to work its way through the internet. And I’ve only blogged one chapter so far! I am so hoping that this post does well for the main reason that it is excerpted from a novel I have been writing — for like a gazillion years. Plus, I invented the word NOVELOG to describe my novel-in-a-blog, and I am hoping it sticks as a solid description for writers out there who are looking for a word to describe their efforts to blog their novels. #NOVELOG

And now for my top two 2019 posts:

#1 HIT

U.S. SENATE SEATS UP FOR REELECTION IN 2020: I was super happy that this blog post was the 2019 top post. First, because people should care about which Senators are up for reelection in 2020, and second, because this post took hours upon hours, and then more hours to pull together. So thanks to my readers for giving back!

#2 HIT

TURKISH SOLDIERS DROVE MY GRANDPARENTS OUT OF SYRIA IN 1920: I was thrilled to see this post hit the number two spot because anyone who has had to suffer at the hands of murdering dictators deserves to get the sympathy and recognition they deserve. Plus, I am so sick of Turkey getting away with their denials and lies about what they did to the Christians during the Armenian Genocide.       

B.O.A.T. (BEST OF ALL TIME)

#1 HIT OF 2015-2019

BULLIES ARE COWARDS AND WHY I REFUSE TO TURN THE OTHER CHEEK: Year after year, this post continues to outperform all the others, and to date, has garnered over 500,000 page views. And year after year I’m thankful for the blog traffic, but the fact that “bullies” is my number one keyword says volumes about the character of our world. And as history has shown us there are way too many psychopathic bullies out there. And from my own personal experiences, someone with a psychopathic personality disorder will always display some sort of mental disorder topped off by a narcissistic disorder. As far as I’m concerned, all three disorders are little more than a convenient label for crackpots and social deviants who over-estimate and exaggerate their abilities, status, intelligence, and looks.

#2 HIT OF 2015-2019 

MY SUN PHOBIA—JUST CALL ME DRACULESS: Ironically, my number two Teri Tome post of all time also features a mental disorder, this one born from anxiety and fear. To date, the page views for this post has exceeded the 400,000 mark. And since this post is about me, I will confess that through therapy I long ago discovered that my phobia was indeed triggered by an unfortunate event although my trigger had nothing to do with the sun. I’ll leave the full explanation for a future blog post.

In reviewing my 2019 hits and misses, as well as my top two posts of all Teri Tome time, I’m at peace with the results.

And I’m prideful that I continue to push myself to put it all out there, and okay, I have some regrets.

But what I don’t regret is when I am long gone, there will be no doubt about who I was, or what I felt, or where I loved, or why I feared.

Because, the who, what, when, why and where of Teri will be present in each and every post, regardless of whether they hit or miss.

Happy New Year to my loyal readers. I wish for you a 2020 that will turn many of your hopes and dreams into reality.

The Teri Tome – Top Hits and Duds of 2018

The Teri Tome - Top Hits and Duds

 

On March 18, 2015, I launched The Teri Tome, and for almost four years I have been sharing, sharing and oversharing.

For those of you who have stuck with me, post after grueling post, you know The Teri Tome is a mishmash of my life, my potential (or not), my political opinions (sorry about that), and everything in between…

…While desperately trying not to drag my family or friends into The Teri Tome fray.

Blogging has been my creative and mental release.  Some would accuse me of TMI.

And I would agree, but it feels good getting all that you-know-what off my chest.

At the end of 2017, I put together the TOP TEN BLOG POSTS IN 2017 based on the posts that received the most page views.

Now, I know you are eagerly waiting for my Top Posts for 2018, but I thought I would change it up a bit by giving you the Top Hits and Duds instead.

Since I only wrote 18 posts in 2018, the pickings are slim, so I’m only going to bore you with four 2018 posts: The top two duds, and the top two hits.

And since I need to stretch this post out a bit, I thought I would also throw in the best and worst of all time (2015-2018).

The 18 posts I wrote in 2018 generated almost 100,000 hits, which I will happily and appreciatively take.

I’ll start with the 2018 duddiest…

#1 DUD 

GLOBAL WARMING – THE NEW NORMAL:  Our world is hotter today than it was yesterday, but this post was a B-O-M-B.  Climate change keeps me up at night but apparently not so much for my readers.

#2 DUD

LIKE A PRAYER: This post was written as fiction to disguise a wedding I attended. I’m sorry it was a dud because the topic is one that many of us know all too well: Siblings who hurt each other.  I didn’t get a ton of hits for this post but it did generate a flurry of emails, mostly to point out that the lyrics of Like A Prayer had dual meanings of sexual innuendo. But I did not intend for it to be anything more than a post about a deceased mother who loved the song, and about her children who found it impossible to love each other.

And now for my top two 2018 besties:

#1 BEST

SELF-PUBLISHING TIPS:  Okay, so bad enough my climate change post was such a dud, but come on people. I’ve been pouring my heart out for a full year, and this post was my winner?

#2 BEST 

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA’S YOUTH: IT’S UP TO YOU TO STOP THE GUN VIOLENCE:  Young people are more than just victims of gun violence; they are now among the leading voices calling for adults to wake up and change our nation’s weak gun laws and deadly gun culture.  Why this post wasn’t my reader’s number one, I have no clue. But it was my personal number one.

G.O.A.T. (THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME)

BULLIES ARE COWARDS AND WHY I REFUSE TO TURN THE OTHER CHEEK: This post has garnered close to 300,000 page views. I should be happy for the views, but I’m saddened that my number one keyword on The Teri Tome is “bullies.” Many bullies also fit the DSM-5 diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: A mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their importance, a deep need for admiration, a lack of empathy for others, are vulnerable to criticism, and attempt to get his or her way through aggressive, threatening, and hurtful behavior toward those who have less power. (Does this sound like anyone you know?)

D.O.A.T. (THE DUDDIEST OF ALL TIME) 

FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY: In 2014, I wrote a novel titled Our Romantic Getaway in which I mention nine songs. My marketing genius idea was to mail out a free signed book to anyone who emailed me their fave song out of the nine.  Except that as my duddiest post of all time, no one got the free book giveaway memo!  FYI: I still have plenty of books so email me a shout out! (Oh and one more FYI: NO, the book is not about me, and YES, I am wearing a top in my author photo.)

In reviewing my duds and hits for 2018, I can honestly say that regardless of their popularity, I’m happy that I put it all out there, and I still have no regrets. Not yet, anyway. Plus, I write because it’s not a choice, it’s a must, and one of the few things in my life that feels genuinely me.

The Teri Tome has allowed me to sate my obsession with words and the power they have.  I am also blown away by the realization that my thoughts and dreams and fears and loves and even hates can all pour out of me with just 26 letters.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2019!