20 years in numbers
Every blog post and newsletter issue since 2005, counted. Where a blog post is a copy of a newsletter issue, it's counted once.
Stories per year
NewsletterBlog only
Show the numbers
| Year | Newsletter | Blog only |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 0 | 2 |
| 2006 | 0 | 2 |
| 2007 | 0 | 4 |
| 2008 | 0 | 2 |
| 2009 | 0 | 27 |
| 2010 | 0 | 92 |
| 2011 | 0 | 93 |
| 2012 | 0 | 41 |
| 2013 | 0 | 13 |
| 2014 | 7 | 18 |
| 2015 | 18 | 75 |
| 2016 | 12 | 39 |
| 2017 | 45 | 34 |
| 2018 | 55 | 72 |
| 2019 | 55 | 46 |
| 2020 | 53 | 53 |
| 2021 | 53 | 27 |
| 2022 | 47 | 23 |
| 2023 | 44 | 22 |
| 2024 | 34 | 3 |
| 2025 | 34 | 1 |
| 2026 | 11 | 0 |
Words per year
Newsletter word counts come from the Substack export, so issues published since the last export (and the paid-only one) aren't counted yet.
Show the numbers
| Year | Words |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 867 |
| 2006 | 2,190 |
| 2007 | 2,459 |
| 2008 | 445 |
| 2009 | 18,092 |
| 2010 | 50,635 |
| 2011 | 49,180 |
| 2012 | 33,468 |
| 2013 | 10,040 |
| 2014 | 19,199 |
| 2015 | 89,547 |
| 2016 | 37,480 |
| 2017 | 63,253 |
| 2018 | 103,465 |
| 2019 | 85,626 |
| 2020 | 131,888 |
| 2021 | 87,746 |
| 2022 | 99,925 |
| 2023 | 93,736 |
| 2024 | 52,011 |
| 2025 | 25,357 |
| 2026 | 14,150 |
Favourite day to publish
Most-written-about places
Records
- Busiest year: 2018, with 127 stories.
- Busiest month: January 2011, with 31 stories.
- Longest story: Man Sloth Mode (1 April 2022), 5,776 words.
- Shortest story: 2nd of March: NUJ, London (24 February 2010), 51 words.
- Most comments: Bob Dylan and William Shakespeare: A Reference Guide Part I (2 December 2010), 32 comments.
- Longest silence: 437 days, from 5 May 2005 to 16 July 2006.
- Average story: 941 words, about 4 minutes' reading.
Words that are special to me
Not the words I use most ("people", "life" and "good", like most writers), but the words I use far more than most writers do. Each word in twenty years of stories is compared with how often it appears in everyday English: books, news, Wikipedia, film subtitles and the web.
Most out of the ordinary
How many times more often I use these words than English in general.
My words
adventure adventures anxiety asylum awe behaviour bicycle bike bikes bivvy borders camp camping capitalism commons constraints creative cycle cycled cycling cyclist cyclists delve expeditions experiment eyeballs fundraising habits happiness hiking humans instructor lockdown logotherapy meditation microdosing migrants outdoor outdoors pandemic psilocybin psychedelic psychedelics refugee refugees rejection ride sauna saunas seekers sitcom sloth solidarity squatting strangers supermarkets touring trees vegan veganism
My people, places and projects
Alertness Antonino Athens Aurelius BBC Beth Bournemouth Breathwork Britain Brownsea Calais COVID Dartmoor Dylan Elevate Foiled Frankl Graeber Granville Graz Jupp Khora Ksar Lees LSD Meditations Salesy Samos Shoshana Steel Stoic Stoicism Thighs Tunisia Tunisian Unbound Viktor Vipassana Whatsapp Wim
Bigger means more distinctive: used both far more than usual and often enough to matter (a log-likelihood score). Tap a word to find the stories it's in.
How the words changed
2005–2012
sleep sacrifice sacrifices exercise girl rating protesters revolution regime novel police anti lamp polyphasic dreaming waiter
For each era, the words used at least twice as often as in the other two. Counted 1,042,790 words, 14 November 2026.
Plain word count: the 60 words used most often
always away better bike book change come course cycling david email ever feel find found free friends good great help home hours human least less life long love need never news newsletter next night nothing part past people read reading ride right steel stories story take thank thanks thighs three want week without words work world write writing year years
Leaving out little words like "the" and "really". Bigger means more often; hover for the count. Frequency alone mostly shows what every writer says a lot, which is why the comparison above is more revealing.