2021 roundup

The year is very nearly over, and it is time, as I usually do, to look back at the year. Like 2020, it’s been a challenging year. Some of it is down to the Covid-pandemic which continues to plague the world, though that is certainly not the entire picture. Working, as I do, for a service provider to agencies under the Norwegian ministry of health, work has been focused on dealing with the agencies’ needs that arise from the pandemic, while also ensuring continued day to day operations. As a company, we’ve grown from around four hundred employees when I joined in 2017, to over a thousand as of this being written.

My union commitment has taken a decided uptick this year, as I took on the role of head of the union local. From being a union steward for a single location, I am now responsible for my union’s dealings with my employer. This hasn’t always been the easiest thing, and it has certainly brought on more than a few late nights. It has many parts to it, and I am happy to have good and committed collaborators in my two local union stewards with whom to share some of the burden.

In this capacity, I negotiated wage for my union back in April, and have spent a lot of time throughout the year negotiating a new on-call agreement together with the other unions. Both were educational experiences, and I am happy to say that they are both in the past (although wage negotiations are going to come around every year, like clockwork).

This year, I took a deliberate break from writing blog posts over the summer. The truth is it was a sorely needed break. I found myself without much in the way of blog post ideas, zero inspiration, and a need to leave well enough alone. This didn’t appear to affect readership numbers at all, which have shown a steady rise since I screwed up ehrm I do of course mean changed the permalink configuration early in the year.

The type of content I do varies, but it usually varies within a relatively well-known and predictable spectrum of tips and tricks, opinion pieces (including a number of reviews), and tech support/process oriented posts. I feel like this mix works well for me, and you can likely expect much of the same in the future. There was, however, a very clear outlier in late November, as I wrote about the week I’d had, and how it had been a particularly Jewish week.

Speaking of readership; right after the permalink change, I averaged around 270 readers per month. I have seen a consistent and gradual growth over the course of the year, and now average around 620 readers per month. As I have said ad nauseam over the years, that’s not why I do this; I write for a readership of one – that readership is myself. The fact that others are finding and reading what I write is, however, a very welcome bonus.

As the year is about to end, I look forward to next year with interest as to what it will bring. I wish you and yours the very best.