My first blog post was in December, 2015 so this month my blog celebrates its fifth anniversary. I have written 96 blog posts over the past five years (this is the 97th) for an average of 19 posts a year. I tried but never quite made my goal of writing two blog posts each month so I’ve fallen short of the 120 mark.
Google Analytics supplies interesting data about who visits my blog page, where the visitors come from and what they read. Most visitors find my blog through an internet search but some access it through social media, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The top three countries of origin of the visitors are 1.) USA; 2.) United Kingdom; and 3.) Canada. This is not surprising since the posts are written in English but there are visitors from European and Asian countries as well. Other handedness researchers read my blog as do members of the general public. Recently, I was pleased to find one of my blog posts cited as a reference in a scholarly paper on handedness. A few posts were reprinted in other blogs with my permission. The numbers of users have increased annually from 4000 in 2017 (the first year with these statistics) to 14,000 in 2020. There was an average of 1300 visits each month for the most recent period of January 1 to November 30, 2020.
My book, Laterality: Exploring the enigma of left-handedness, was published in January, 2016. I started the blog as a companion resource to the book. Left-handers are curious about themselves and there is a lot of misinformation about the topic on the internet. I thought left-handers deserved an internet source that discussed the science and not the mythology of left-handedness. Glib slogans on t-shirts are fun but usually do not reflect the research reality about left-handedness. Most often, my blog readers are receptive to the scientific findings even when it contradicts their pet theory about left-handedness. Occasionally, I receive emails and queries from readers about blog topics. I am always ready to discuss their particular concerns or to accommodate their requests for information.
In the early years, I wrote blog posts on topics about left-handedness discussed in my book. Sometimes I was inspired by Facebook comments made by left-handers asking questions about their personal situations. There is an active community of handedness researchers and many scientific studies on the topic are published each year. In the last two years, I have focused my blog posts on this recent research. I thought I would end my blog when I ran out of things to write about, but given the activity surrounding the science of handedness, it does not look like that is going to happen soon. The establishment of databases containing behavioral, neural imaging, and genomic data from thousands of participants promises to yield insights into the development of different handedness types. Handedness research is taking exciting new directions as the 21st century progresses.
The year 2020 has been a hard one and many are eager to see it end. I send my best wishes to all my blog readers for a safe and healthy holiday season, socially distanced and masked up. I hope 2021 is the year I achieve my goal of two blog posts a month, is the year the pandemic ends, and is the year of a return to good health or continued good health for all of us.