2015 in retrospect and where do we go from here?

Each January I like to sit down, have a cup of tea and look through the blog from the previous year
and reflect on what I want to do in the current year. Looking through the post I wrote in January 2015 I realize that the quote of the month did not go as planned (to put it mildly), and I do hope I can restart it this year, because I really love quotes. If you are looking for a freshly written indepth article you can skip this post, but if you are curious as to which posts were the most popular wth the raders, which posts were my favorites, which posts garnered the most discussion etc please read on.

Before I begin to write more articles or even to look through what I have written in 2015 I want to thank all the readers and supporters out there. Thank you all very much:-) Your questions, comments and support has inspired and continues to inspire me, and the blog will keep going strong with many hopefully exciting projects in the works for 2016. This is starting to become somewhat of a tradition for me, but I really want to highlight the commenters of this blog as many of the comments spurrs new posts and or add a lot of value to the original posts. Thank you :-)

The facebook page of this blog has grown a lot these last few months and is at the time of writing this nearing 700 likes ! That is roughly 700 more than I thought it would get so I am very happy and excited about that. I do hope that the facebook page and this blog gets shared a lot in 2016 and if you find anything you like here in the posts (and I believe there should be something for just about everyone by now) please share so that more people can see that Traditional Taekwondo as a martial art has a lot more going for it than "just" Olympic sparring alone. The blog itself has avaraged roughly on 200 readers a day this year too, allthough some days have seen a lot more traffic than that. One the best days its been closer to 1000 hits a day. On slow days we have had around 100 hits.

New record for most hits in a month
The month with the most traffic in 2015 was December with 7 000 hits (6 974 but I like round numbers) and the month with the least traffic was February with 4 750 hits. The older record was September 2014 with 6180 hits.

The most read posts of 2015 from most read and downwards:

1. 10 steps to bring back Taekwondo as a Martial Art!
2. Back to the Sources part 1: Throws in Taekwondo?
3. Basic theory for cup graders part 1 and 2
4. Thoughts from "Advancing in Taekwondo"
5. Applying Taekwondo the old way?

The posts that garnered the most comments in 2015:

1. Back to the Sources part 4: Grappling in contemporary Sources
2. Taekwondo is not and has never been a "Kick Block punch" system
3. 10 steps to bring back Taekwondo as a Martial Art
4. Searching out practical Applications to Poomsae part 2
5. Keys to understand Poomsae

My favorite posts in 2015 (in no partiqular order):

1. The Complete Taegeuk il jang series
2. What was in Hwang Kee`s 1958 book
3. Back to the Source(s) series
4. 10 steps to bring back Taekwondo as a Martial Art
5. Guest post: The Secrets to winning all Your fights with Taegeuk il jang

Totally Taekwondo Magazine:

The best posts usually end up in a refined state as an article for Totally Taekwondo Magazine. If you like my blog and Taekwondo and have yet to try out this Magazine I think I can safely recommend that you go to www.totallytkd.com and check it out.

Do Woo (Norwegian Magazine)

This is a small Magazine in printed format only so far which comes out twice a year and is sendt out to the members of Traditional Taekwondo Union. It features how to articles, history, philosphy and recollections of seminars and camps. It is only in Norwegian and so far only on printed format but if they get digitalized I will link to them in case there are any Norwegians out there who would be interesting in reading it (apart for those who are members of the TTU).

Projects for 2016

I have several projects lined up for 2016. I will obviously continue to write for the blog as I have done for the last couple of years so do not worry :-) I do see that the older articles I wrote back in 2011 onward is getting overlooked and "drowns" in the information I put out and continue to put out. Therefore I am in the process of collecting and publishing them on an e-book format on kindle (to start with) so that they can be read and enjoyed once again. Some I have rewritten extensively and I am also writing some exlusive content for the ebook so that eventhough you have read all my posts from 2011 you will get "new" content as well. Over time I hope to publish one book for each year (volume 1 = 2011, Volume 2 = 2012 and so on) but it remains to see if this is of any interest. I think I will have completed Volume 1 in a few months time if all go as planned. I hope to get Volume 2 out this year as well, but seeing how much work it is (even if the rough draft is allready there in the blog posts themselves) I very much doubt I will get more than 2 volumes this year.

On Christmas (Norwegian Christmas is December 24th) I posted a translation of the content list of Hwang Kee`s 1958 book as well as a commentary based on it a few days later. Despite this is extremely interesting material for my self I see that the posts has not proven very popular with both being read 20 times each. Despite the slow start and initial low interest I will continue translating and publishing a few more pages from this book and comments on it.

2015 became the year that I posted perhaps the most practical Applications of Poomsae in all the time I have written. Thanks to Ivar my victim  willing partner and Kurt the photographer I could share a lot more than what Words and crappy drawings ever could. I will continue to share these in 2016 but I want and think it is time to also write a little more on the philosophy of Taekwondo as I see it.

So there you have it. 2016 = More blog posts, more Magazine articles and e-book Publishing :-)