Gin & Lemonade in 2019: My Best Blogging Year

And so, I kinda don’t know how we got here, the eve of a new year, new decade, a turned page.

My word of the year was ‘shenanigans’, and we lived up to it, although maybe not in the way I set out when I declared the word. I’ll share our recent family road trip, but today I wanted to revisit Gin & Lemonade’s Top 10 Posts of 2019.

Some notes:

I wrote 45 posts in 2019, and 88 in 2018.

2019 was my highest traffic year in nine years, even with fewer posts. Still not the greatest, but a great motivation going forward.

8 out of 10 of my most popular posts are disability related, and so I found my writing focus this year.

Consistency is still an issue for me, and honestly the lack of a blogging schedule has stalled my growth up to this point, but tomorrow is another day. For real.

Before we get to tomorrow, I want to take stock of this year.

I’m counting down my most popular posts this year, by traffic.

10. The Day A Lego Made Me Cry – Back in May, we took a road trip to a Lego model show, where my eyes leaked at some positive disability representation.

9. What Happens When You Give Up Coffee For A Month? This year, I tried to improve my post titles to match what people might search on Google. And so, this post was what actually happened when I attempted to cut out coffee.

8. 12 Awesome Gifts For Writers has now been updated with more than 12.

7. Disabled Parenting Problems was my first post of this year, retelling how my daughter mooned a bookshop, and other stories.

6. 38 Places To Find Writing Prompts is more than 38 places to find writing motivation.

5. My Wedding Dress, My Wheelchair, & Me was another essay I wrote in the beginning of this year, when a wheelchair landed in a bridal shop window display. I had thoughts on it. I have since written a piece on the practical side of wedding dress shopping for wheelchair users on Stylist Magazine.

4. Disabled People Need Access, Not Backpacks is my opinion on a viral news story.

3. Talking To My Kid About Disability is an essay on how my daughter sees me, and explains my wheelchair to her friends. And strangers. And anyone else who will listen. This piece also appeared on WordPress Discover and Scary Mommy.

2. My Top 10 Posts on Disability is a disabled blogger tag post which includes more of my disability writing.

1. Disability Representation And Why I Bought A Barbie In My 30s. I went shopping, saw a wheelchair-user Barbie. Had a moment and took a photo. Shared the moment on Facebook, and that Facebook post reached 7 million people. My most popular post on Gin & Lemonade in 2019 was the background to the viral Facebook post.

If you’d like to support my writing, so I can write more, please consider buying me a coffee, or joining me on Patreon.

And so, it’s been a year.

Thank you for reading, commenting and connecting. Thank you for the emails, and the shares.

I plan to blog more regularly in 2020, to make tomorrow and beyond even better than 2019.

What would you like to see on Gin & Lemonade in 2020?