New Years Day always gives us a chance to reflect back on the things we did in the previous year. One big thing I did was create this blog. I’ve been a writer at heart since I was in middle school, with dreams of being a published author, and years later, dreams of being a screenwriter. Things didn’t work out that way (as of yet) but I did get into writing about a hobby of mine, and have proudly been a paid professional hobby writer for well over a decade.
Even though it’s a lot of fun to write about a hobby you love, it’s a pretty narrow niche potential audience, and it occurred to me last year that starting a blog might be a good way to stretch my writing chops and expand my audience and network of readers and other writers. When I was contemplating what to write about, the fact that I was going through a divorce and needing to start my life over seemed like the perfect thing to write about. Not only would it be much more accessible to readers, but it could also be cathartic to write, providing me with a way to shape my thoughts and feelings going forward, to help me learn from mistakes in the past and focus on the sorts of people I want to be in my life going forward.
The concept was that the blog name “My Ideal Woman” be the first part of an affirmative sentence, with each blog post title “… She’d be (something something)” as the second part of the sentence. Eventually ideas for posts came that didn’t exactly fit the paradigm but that was my original framing.
WordPress was kind enough to generate a “report” for the year, which gave me all kinds of nifty stats. It says that my blog got about 9,300 views across the 51 new posts I put up, which sounds pretty good to my novice blogging eyes!
It was a bit mind-boggling to see I got hits from all over the world –
North America: US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica
Europe: The U.K., Netherlands, Germany, France and Spain
Oceana: Australia, New Zealand
Asia: India, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Pakistan
South America: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Columbia
Africa: Egypt, South Africa, Mauritius, Tunisia, Morocco
MAY (3 posts)
May 26, 2011: A blog is born!
“The art girls came in all varieties—petite or tall, slender or round, black or white, corn-fed or exotic… all of them had that potent creative force that swirled around them like an aura of sex and love and life and potential.”
I kicked off the first post for My Ideal Woman with …She Would Be Creative, an ode to creative, artistic women.
Most Popular …She Would Have Curves
“…when I have the privilege of putting my hands on a woman’s body, I want to feel curves! I want to feel substance… I want to feel female and different and exotic.”
JUNE (4 posts)
Most Popular …She’d Savor Smooching
“She scooted around to me and planted a kiss that stopped time, her tongue gently exploring, the mouth warm and tasting of wine. I may have actually levitated off the ground for several moments…”
…She’d Envy My iPod (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4)
“One thing that’s been lacking in my life of late is someone with whom I can soak in music, just bask in the rolling guitars, driving rhythms, angelic voices, romantic lyrics, someone who might even join me in singing along…”
For me, music is a big part of life and love, and it’s important to me that the next woman in my life shares that sentiment, so I thought it might be fun to talk about some of my favorite songs on my iPod. I ended up doing it in 4 parts and organizing them by various points in my evolving tastes in music.
JULY (4 posts)
Most Popular Alas, Camelot
“Eva Green’s Morgan Pendragon was awesome in the first couple of episodes– she was totally sexy, feral, lustful and ambitious.”
This was another “TV review” on a show I had been meaning to write about, but when I heard that Starz had no renewed Camelot for another season, I figured I’d best get to writing! One thing I had noted about the run of the season was that Camelot had really amped up the sex appeal in the early shows, featuring a lot of nudity by the incredibly sexy Eva Green (who played Morgan Pendragon), along with some brief nudity (and a hot sex scene) with newcomer Tamsin Egerton (who played Guinevere). Sadly for fans of naked human bodies and sex scenes, there were fewer and fewer as the season progressed, which seemed to oddly coincide with the series’ plummeting ratings. One interesting note: I regularly get hits for “Tamsin Egerton nude” even now, months and months after Camelot ended. I guess people really miss those early sex scenes!
…She’d Live and Love in the Moment
“…it could really lead to a more interesting and mature relationship than I’ve experienced before– one where we’re not really looking at future milestones we’d need to be checking off over the years, but one where we can focus on us, the here and now, and what makes each of us happy, healthy and loved each day.”
I was listening to a fun and raunchy podcast called Why You Suck In Bed, and one episode’s conversation led me to meditate on marriage and whether or not I ever wanted to get married again.
AUGUST (10 posts)
The first three months of the blog I wrote at a leisurely pace, measuring out updates about once a week. In August though I kicked it up a notch.
Most Popular …She Would Have Curves (Pt 2)
“…And realizing for the first time the promised land that lay in the curves between the palms of my hands. The promise of sex, love, procreation, pleasure, home in the swing of your hips.”
While thinking about topics about women to write about, I felt that I’d not really given the topic of a woman’s curves their due with …She Would Have Curves, which focused on three actresses. No, I wanted to just write an ode to curvy women, and their hips in particular after being inspired by the song Come On Get Higher I’d recently downloaded by Matt Nathanson which had the lyrics “faith and desire in the swing of your hips.” I wrote about the first time I became aware as a male of the power of a female’s hips at a middle-school dance. I found some really sexy pics of women’s hips to weave in the post as well.
“…step by step, as you make choices those possibilities fall away until you’re left with all the decisions you’ve made to get to the place you are, and by implication all the possibilities that won’t come to pass because of those decisions end up haunting you.”
I’d dipped into the medium of television to inspire posts on women, and thought movies was a natural way to expand on that. XX/XY seemed like a perfect movie to do here, a movie I really liked, one that isn’t very well known, and the title says it all—about men and women.
“She’s gorgeous and young. She’s got tattoos and a killer smile. She wants me to sing her a song.”
This is quite simply my all-time favorite post of the blog so far, I suppose because I got to make some new memories to write about. My life right now doesn’t leave much time for socializing so most of what I write about are meditations on the past or things I’ve watched on TV or just random thoughts. In late August, I had a week of interesting things happen to write about, culminating in a night of karaoke, drinking, and partying until the sun came up.
SEPTEMBER (11 posts)
Guest Spot on Simply Solo: The Spice of Life
“So many doors that can only be open for you to step through because a relationship you were in came to an end. It’s exciting, wonderful, sometimes terrifying…”
Catherine Gryp, who writes the awesome single life/relationship blog Simply Solo contacted me after running across my blogpost …She Would Have Curves (pt 2) and asked if I’d like to be one of her weekly guest writers. Obviously I was thrilled, not only because she’s got a huge audience but because she writes a really great blog, and having her invite me on felt like a huge complement to My Ideal Woman.
It also freaked me out a little bit… I mean, my readership before then was relatively small; Catherine’s audience is huge, and presumably some percentage of that audience would click over to My Ideal Woman and check it out. This prompted me to revamp my About page, and rethink my blog banner. See, my original banner was this:
I find this picture sexy, artsy, and the very essence of female. However, I was concerned that others might find it a bit too much, maybe off-putting, gratuitous. Worse, Not Safe For Work! I wanted to make sure my blog header remained sexy, artsy, and the very essence of female without being too much, so I asked for some advice from MJ Scott, an artistic friend of mine and she knocked my socks off by sending me back a design that is now my blog header!
MJ rocks!
Most Popular Women of Fall TV: Parenthood
“Her character is appealing– smart, driven, compassionate, a feminist, with some flaws and insecurities that bubble up sometimes. And when she had full-on babymaking fever last season, several of those scenes were smoking hot! I can attest that few things are better in a married-man’s life than when his wife has the fever.”
Much like my post on Happy Endings, this TV show’s large cast let me talk about a variety of different women. If you read the comments, you can see some of my initial feelings towards the women on the show have changed this season, in no small part due to the writers ramping up the sex vibe.
“There’s an inherent optimism in creation, whether in art, in politics, or in making a child to bring into this world. Falling in love is the ultimate expression of optimism, right?”
I wrote this blogpost after watching Frida again, high on margaritas, contemplating friendship, sex, love, art, politics and realizing that writing My Ideal Woman had actually changed the way I thought about things. Fascinating!
OCTOBER (11 posts)
Most Popular Women of Fall TV: Pan Am
“I was excited to hear Kelli Garner would be spending time with me every week. I’ve been smitten with Ms. Garner ever since I first saw her in Thumbsucker.”
Another large cast, lots of different women… and another popular post. Hm, I see a trend here!
“They were one of three cassettes I bought one Saturday afternoon on the recommendation of a lovely girl I was dating at the time and it knocked my socks off and totally reoriented what I knew about good music.”
Here I talk a little bit about my current life situation, plans to change things, and the rock and roll band The Pixies.
NOVEMBER (7 posts)
Most Popular Women of Fall TV: New Girl
“Zooey Deschanel as Jess is a joy to watch each week. FOX apparently coined the cringe-worthy term adorkable to describe her character, but as much as I hate to admit it, it’s the perfect description.”
People seem to love Zooey Deschanel as much as I do, and their searches sometimes lead them to my blog. Zooey’s costar Hannah Simone gets some love as well.
“I find it a rare joy when you can enjoy a film one one way when you first watch it, and have that enjoyment change in tone and texture as you yourself have changed over time.”
I wrote the original review back when I first saw Lost in Translation in the movie theater. I recently watched the movie again, and realized that my feelings on the movie had changed in the intervening years and thought it interesting to blog about.
I’ve also noticed that “lost in translation” search gets a ton of hits leading to my blog… apparently this wonderful little movie still gets a lot of attention 8-9 years later.
DECEMBER (8 posts)
Most Popular Last Kiss
“…sometimes I worry that, if I got run over by a truck tomorrow it would be a damn shame that the last person I kissed was my ex wife.”
I think it’s fascinating that such a random, short, kinda silly post seems to get so much traffic. Do other people have this sort of concern? 
“It was intoxicating, the level of interest this girl-woman paid to me despite my painful shyness.”
A sweet memory about unrequited love in high-school inspired by the awesome TV show Freaks and Geeks.
And that’s the end of 2011! Thanks for taking this journey with me, coming here and honoring me with your time in sharing my thoughts, sometimes providing much appreciated feedback, and many of you writing some fantastic blogging yourself. I hope you’ll continue with me here in the new year!
Do you have a favorite post here on My Ideal Woman? Is there anything you’d like to see here in 2012, either something I’ve done before, or something new?
This is a terrific bird-eye view of your blog, Ben. Each entry invites further reading….
Thanks, Stacy– glad you liked it! Hope you find some enjoyable posts you maybe haven’t read yet
[...] I needed to do something special. Hmmm… what should that be? A retrospective? Well, I did a 2011 year review of my blog just a few months back in January, so doing another one seemed a bit redundant. Not to [...]