Conundrum ... and Best Wishes for 2024!

BlogSpot, as publisher of my blog, keeps statistics on "From Pencilbox to Keyboard" including who is viewing my writing -- not specifically by individual, but by country.  Each week they provide a map of the world highlighting those countries that have someone who dropped in to take a look and then they tell you how many views from each country. It's fun to check and to wonder how they were even able to access my blog in places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, etc. I would think it might be difficult unless they are using Musk's Starlink or something.  I actually know very little about what technology is available in those countries so I hesitate to speculate.

In addition to those friends who access it on Facebook, I have other readers from all over the world -- most commonly from the United States, of course, but also often from Sweden, France, Spain, England, Ireland, Poland... northern European and Scandinavian mostly.  Once in a while, someone finds their way from Mexico or Japan.  At least I hope they are reading and not just glancing by.  Once in a while I hear from readers in some form of comment.  It's nice. It makes the world seem friendlier somehow -- warmer and less scary. People are people wherever they are.

I understand really why I don't have any views from places like, North Korea, Africa, and very few from the Mideast, but I simply could not understand why in all the years I have been writing this blog, I had only one solitary view from Canada and that was early December of this year. I mean, after all, we are neighbors. Then Bam! that all changed a week or so later when I logged into BlogSpot to check tracking stats and Boom! ...  1.34K views over a two day period ... about 150 of them from Canada. What? Why would that happen all of a sudden after blogging off and on since 2013 or 2014 and in all those years probably averaging 500-600 views/month. It's a conundrum.

It was all very exciting.  Wonder if it will happen again?  Was it a glitch of some sort? Anyway -- using the BlogSpot "all time" summary chart so I don't miss anyone -- Hello and Best New Year wishes to the US, and to Germany, Finland, Canada, Czechia, South Korea, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Switzerland and also ... to those countries that BlogSpot classifies as "Other". From other stat reports, I know that "Other" includes Poland, Iceland, Mexico, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine, India, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Japan, and China. Thank you for dropping by.

Anyway --  May the entire world have a good 2024.  Is that possible?  Oh how it wish it would be.  In many respects 2023 has been a bit of a "dumpster fire" around the world.  We need a positive change. It's time.