Usually a year is just a year, but I’d like to give 2015 credit for being so – different – for me.

I started off roaming the streets of frigid Montreal as I welcomed 2015 with my family. Days later I began service on the Plainfield Board of Education. April brought me to Cleveland to see my first Cavs game (here), and then a return to France, and Switzerland (photos: here, here, here, and here).

The summer was long workouts and a great new job, which all culminated with a late-August return to a more temperate Montreal (here).

Of course, with Fall came a devastating apartment fire (here) that has transformed itself to a blessing over these past few months. Meanwhile, since September, Monday night continuing education courses in the city have changed my perspective of who I am.

And I am posting this from the Viatnamese capitol of Hanoi. You can see my trip thus far (here and here). What a way to end a spectacular year.

As for the blog

This year represented a few shifts for Plainfield View. It was the spring and summer of photos, and the Fourth of July pictures were fittingly the second-most viewed of the year. Top post? That honor would go to “Straight Outta Plainfield,” highlighting R Marcos Taylor’s portrayal of Suge Knight in a critically acclaimed biopic Straight Outta Compton.

With proliferating responsibilities, I became more focused on quality than quantity, only averaging a post per four days.

Regarding content, the blog also became more of a human interest site. In 2014, the first full year of this blog, only 21% of referred views (where someone clicks a link to access the blog) came through Facebook, the rest coming from a bunch of other sources. This year, 53%. It’s more about what stories interest Plainfield at large, not just the small group of highly opinionated people involved in local politics.

A charter school vulture. Event photos. Local charter school funding. The Plainfield 1967 uprising. A Plainfield cop saving a baby. The burgeoning Black movement. A burnt up apartment. The week in photos. A tribute to a long time coach. These things interest people. Despite a link in the Courrier, my important and “controversial” piece supporting moving the BOE elections did not make the top third of 2015’s eighty-seven posts.

I’ve enjoyed gaining the pulse of what most people want to read about the most while having more fun and still expressing my beliefs and explaining my positions. It’s been so much more satisfying.

To all, I give my best wishes for 2016!