TOP 10 SPECIAL: Year 2012 highlights – part 5

First things first: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hopefully all of your New Year celebrations went well, I for instance managed to wake up without my alarm clock just 6 hours after my head touched the pillow, which I am not complaining about at all – or just a lot! Those things aside, a new year means looking back at the past year and going back all the way to January to see what I did during what was supposed to be “my year”. Well, it wasn’t but I’m okay with that.

Looking back is quite the task, it’s even more difficult to come up with ten different things to look back at, except the numbers and those are quite obviously the highlight of my year. So this is kind of a challenge in the morning of January the first that I sprung upon myself when I started this series of TOP 10s. Therefore I have no one to blame but myself but hopefully my pain will be your gain, and either my highlights will make you happy that your blog is doing better or I’ll get genuine congratulations,  I’m super thrilled that you made it with me from 2012 to 2013.

In 2012 I wrote 60 reviews and it all started with Hesher and ended with The Words. Both movies I liked, not in a “omg, I love this forever” kind of way but in a way that I’m glad that these represent the start and the end of 2012.

From January to May, nothing special happened actually, I was my usual, review here, TV-show post there kind of a blogger but then I decided to have a fresh start. And then the endless change of design begun and as you can see now, it’s again a bit different so – it will probably never end. It was also the moment I started taking blogging more seriously. My blog needed that fresh start and I have to admit, though I’m still tweaking and nitpicking at things in my blog, it is far better that it was in the beginning of 2012.

The first “new beginnings” post was about The Hunger Games but as I look at it back now, I have a feeling I should re-write it and give it another look from a more experienced place. Though I doubt my opinion would change, I do think my way of expressing my opinion about it, has grown immensely during the last months of 2012. SO I kind of figured that The Hunger Games review was also the beginning of a more serious review writing.

Looking back at my post about my DVD collection I get a bit teary, firstly, my mom destroyed my plastic shelf box thing and now my DVDs are in the closet – hidden from the world like I’m ashamed or something. Well, I am not! I’m proud that it is little and cute and I guess I crossed the 100 mark in 2012 as well, aiming at 150 for the end of 2013? My wallet might not agree but yes, I love original DVDs and despite the strange looks people give me for buying them (it happens way too often to be rare), I still support the notion of giving back to the movie world.

This is actually my biggest achievement in terms of me and my blog and our “relationship” – I know it sounds weird but I can’t phrase it differently. So, it all started with 100 Film Facts about me, a post that I’m still very proud of, which meant that I realized that the amount of work I need to put into my blog must be much greater than I had been doing so far. Don’t get me wrong, writing is always something that I had worked on previously but I can’t explain it, I guess my level of commitment just became a bit higher in 2012 and I plan to take it all and more to 2013!

Talking about numbers, I hit 100,000 views this Summer including getting 50+ followers, 1000+ comments and getting 80,000+ views a year! But despite my grand finale that brought me nearly the best amount of views in the whole year (more about in the ReWind December), I still had my best month with January and February. First brought me most views and second most average views per day – hoping to beat all those in the upcoming year! Hoping a lot with numbers actually, since 2012 had so many improvements I can’t help to set the bar higher for 2013.

In 2012 two new things happened, first, I participated in my first (and for some weird reason the only one) ever blogathon called The Year I Made Contact which was hosted by The Movie Waffler which led me to my second,  my oh so awesome movie blogathon! To be honest, I am super proud of my baby and I hope I will come up with an idea for a next one because hosting it was a blast! Has everybody seen Our Movie Alphabet that I put together for us and with the help of so many of you?

I didn’t know how else to put it but I feel like 2012 brought Mettel Ray Movie Blog some structure. I have certain tags and posts that I am writing, keeping it simple at the moment. Trying to organize myself in a way that it allows me to keep that structure. Finishing things that I have started is one of the things I still have to work on but I feel like the structure I have now is helping me out a bit.

Going back to January and then all the way up to December I had so many different rating systems going on that I myself can’t understand what I was thinking during those times. Therefore, my biggest accomplishments, my own highlight of 2012, is finally putting down a rating system that I love and will have until.. a long time! It will take time to get used to, I’m still getting used to it myself but I love it and I hope to have a better overview of movies while having a clear system to rate them. With that, I am ready to tackle 2013 and get the blogging, rating and reviewing started! But not before I finish off this TOP 10 with my blog’s number one highlight of 2012!

As one of the best years of my blog so far, YOU GUYS made most of it! All those new followers, all those comments (most popular post this year) and discussions – you are far more important to me than I had ever thought a community could be! Honestly, I can’t find myself to comment as much as some of you seem to be doing, I can hardly keep up posting next to my school work while you all do the same and more and still find time to visit all the amazing movie blogs out there. So I want to thank you all, for all the lovely words and at times, giving me advice when I need it. Thank you!

Thank YOU!

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