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Most Popular Posts

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Predicting the outcome of a game or an election is child’s play compared to the uncertainty I face as a blog author. I’ve been writing this blog for a decade and still can’t predict which posts will attract the most readers. 

According to my site statistics, for example, my most successful post of the past 12 months was Stones of Remembrance, about a COVID memorial in Buenos Aires. Back in May 2024, I described the memorial, shown below, and asked why our own country has done so little to honor the million-plus Americans who died during the pandemic.

I never expected that post to build an audience over time and end up first in Google’s rankings for searches on “Argentina Covid Memorial.”

As part of this blog’s 10-year anniversary, I’m pausing my regular content to pop open the blog’s hood and share some insights about it. I’m guessing this may be especially interesting to those of you who are fellow writers, social media users or data geeks. As you’ll see, though, my guess may well be wrong.

So back to the statistics.

My second-most popular piece of the year, Amazing But False, was about tour guides in Portugal, including the one above, who kept telling me a startling story about their country’s divorce rate. I knew the story was nonsense and was amused by their obstinancy in clinging to it. On a whim, I dashed off a quick post, which now ranks higher on Google than similar stories from the BBC and elsewhere.

Third was Momos Down Under, about the delicious Nepalese dumplings we ate in Australia and New Zealand, including at the shop in Christchurch shown above. The post is Google’s top hit for “momos in Australia.” For “momos in New Zealand,” it ranks second, behind a Tripadvisor guide on the topic.

I enjoyed writing all three posts but, honestly, they meant less to me than some others, like my recent story and video about the school we helped build in Nepal. All three were just interesting things I observed while traveling.

I don’t check my traffic statistics often and haven’t discussed them here since 2017, when I reached 200 posts. I write for fun, not as a business, and have resisted inquiries about monetizing this site.

My most popular story back in 2017 remains atop my all-time list. This one isn’t a surprise. Peace Corps After 50, which I wrote while serving in Moldova, was promoted on a PBS website, above, and elsewhere. It’s been attracting views ever since, presumably from older Americans thinking about applying. Over time, it’s slipped in the Google rankings, but that’s unsurprising since Google’s algorithm favors fresher content.

Ah, the Google search engine algorithm. It’s their mysterious, ever-changing formula for ranking pages. Advertisers, political consultants and others obsess about it. I wish I still had my crack Duke University social media team available to advise me why my stories about a foreign memorial and divorce rate have done so well. Maybe it’s because they were both on niche topics where my article could stand out more than one about Middle East autocracies or even Magical Kathmandu.

Or maybe there’s another reason. If you have any insights, please share them with a comment. Don’t wait, though. Before we all know it, artificial intelligence is likely to transform the entire search engine business, which extends beyond Google.

Another measure of user interest is file downloads from a site. At the top of my site’s download list are the lyrics to Orașul Meu, the song and music video I produced with Moldovan singer Laura Bodorin. That song is still being performed in Ialoveni, the city where we created it.

Speaking of users, most of mine live in the United States, followed by Moldova, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Rounding out the top ten are Nepal, Romania, Australia, India and China. Readers in more than 150 countries have visited the site at least once.

I produce the site using the TwentyFourteen theme on WordPress.

I might now close by expressing my deep appreciation to the web designers, editors and others who work with me on the site. However, the entire operation is just me, with 384 posts so far and more to come.

Looking ahead, I hope to keep entertaining you with whatever travels, topics and musings come next, even as I acknowledge my inability to predict which posts you’ll find interesting. 

That unpredictability extends to this post. I have no idea how many people will read it. Maybe nobody. Maybe a lot. Who knows? Now that you’ve reached the end, though, I know that at least one person finished it, so maybe my odds just got a little better.

Top photo: Tram near our Airbnb in Lisbon. Photo by Karen Simon.

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Posts I’ll Remember

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A family reunion in the Himalayas. An emotional return to Moldova. A big birthday. I wrote about these things and more this year. As we now turn the page, here are excerpts from some of my favorite 2023 posts:

Our family reunion in Nepal: “We heard the drums as our car pulled up to Champa’s family house in eastern Nepal. Then we saw the dancers. Champa’s brother appeared with an armful of flower garlands. His wife held colorful scarves. We’d arrived in Ilam, where Champa grew up and the two of us met when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now it was 45 years later.”

Vietnam: “People seemed genuinely happy we were there and not only because we were bringing them business after the pandemic. They were proud of their history, their culture and their progress. They wanted us to know they are more than the place where America fought a misguided war.”

Discovering craft beer in Phnom Penh: “As an American who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, I’d associated Vietnam and Cambodia with war and genocide, not with IPAs. I was glad to update my perspective. If I go back, though, I’m still not asking for the fried insects.”

Returning to Moldova: “We returned to our Peace Corps workplaces and learned, after more than five years, that our impact has endured more than we’d realized.”

Visiting Ukraine’s neighbors: “My friends in Moldova, and those on the front lines in Ukraine, don’t know anything about the dysfunction in our Congress. They just need help, and fast.”

Oregon: “At first glance, Oregon matched its stereotype when we visited last week: a coffee-sipping, beer-brewing, wine-tasting paradise filled with hikers and bicyclists wearing Patagonia jackets and REI backpacks. But then we discovered an Oregon far more diverse.”

Hip replacement surgery: “The experience has reminded me of something I haven’t wanted to think about, which is the inevitability of physical decline. No matter how active, engaged and ‘not exactly retired’ we aspire to be in this stage of life, we cannot avoid life’s frailties forever. We’re all in the lobby for the organ recital.”

My 70th Birthday: “I hadn’t been looking forward to this birthday. A decade ago, when I turned 60, I was still working. Five years ago, I was wrapping up my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova. But now, I was entering a decade that used to be synonymous with old age.”

Giving Away My Grandfather Clock: “It’s a reality many older Americans eventually confront: Our adult children don’t want our stuff. … We all fill our lives and hearts in different ways. As I’ve been reminded this week, it’s all stuff, and it doesn’t last forever. Time passes even if the clock breaks. Tick tock.”

Keeping Active: “I wonder sometimes whether I’m trying to prove something, to myself above all. Maybe I’m compensating for the fact that I no longer have the title and recognition of a formal job. Indeed, when I return these days to the campus where I used to work, few people recognize me. They just see a random retired guy. So maybe I’ve been filling up my schedule as a way to say: ‘Hey, I’m still here.’”

Favorite Books: “Bless your heart, Demon Copperhead. You’ve beaten my annual Top Ten book list like a borrowed mule and now I’m madder than a rattlesnake in a forest fire.”

Goodbye for Now

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We rang the COS bell on Tuesday, completing our service in Peace Corps Moldova.

We joined a large group of volunteers in our group who are among the first to officially complete their service. Champa and I depart on Wednesday for a short trip and will then head home to North Carolina. 

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This special moment also feels like the right time for me to take a pause from this blog.

IMG_3918Readers, I want to thank you so much for following along with Champa and me, regardless of how recently you discovered “Not Exactly Retired” or how regularly you’ve tuned in. IMG_3931I’ve posted 265 stories since we started our adventure three years ago, attracting readers from around the world. My blog posts and videos have been viewed more than 100,000 times. I’ve treasured the messages and comments I’ve received in response, especially from readers who said they were inspired to follow their own dreams.

This blog and my videos never interfered with my primary Peace Corps assignment at the Ialoveni library or the projects I’ve undertaken in Moldova. (As a former news office director, I work fast.) Indeed, they have helped me make sense of our time here while simultaneously promoting the Peace Corps goal of enhancing understanding between Americans and people in other countries.

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I’m not ending the blog, just taking a break while we reintegrate with American life and our family (above), which has been waiting for us to come home. I expect to return in the future with some new adventures and hope you will join me then. 

We’ve loved having you with us on our journey and hope you will pursue yours as well. Life is awaiting you, no matter how you choose to define your own “not exactly.” For now, I bid you a heartfelt la revedere.

100 Posts

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This is my 100th post on Not Exactly Retired, which has attracted more than 7,500 visitors since it began in mid-2015. I’ll be celebrating the milestone with a special series about older volunteers in the Peace Corps, starting with my next post.

First, though, especially during this holiday season, I want to pause to tell all of you how much I love producing this blog and appreciate all of you who read it.

img_2535Before Champa and I began our journey 18 months ago, I spent a career doing communications for nonprofit organizations, much of it ghost-writing articles and speeches for others. For four decades, I largely put my own writing aside.

Only after I started Not Exactly Retired did I realize how much I’d missed speaking in my own voice.

Now I get to report first-hand on issues such as immigration or the devastating 2015 earthquake in Nepal. I can be silly, as with the adventures of our traveling gnome. I can produce videos one week and share recipes the next. Some posts get picked up elsewhere and reach national audiences.

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What I’ve enjoyed most is sharing the incredible experiences Champa and I have had since we walked away from our conventional American lives to pursue new lives of adventure and service, most recently as Peace Corps volunteers in eastern Europe. I treasure the many messages I’ve received and posts I’ve seen from people saying the blog is inspiring them to consider changes in their own lives.

I’ve always been a quick writer, so I can produce the blog while remaining active with everything else I am privileged to be doing as a Peace Corps volunteer. Things go even faster because the layers of my institutional vetting process now work as follows:

Me talking to myself: “So, David, do you approve this?”

Me answering myself: “Yes.”

screen-shot-2016-12-03-at-11-22-25-amMost blogs fail. A 2009 New York Times article cited a Technorati survey saying 95 percent of blogs were “essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.”

Not Exacly Retired is going strong thanks to all of you who read it, offer comments and send encouragement. I hope you enjoy the upcoming series and everything that follows. If you have a friend or relative who is pondering how to live the second half of their lives,  or who just has a sense of adventure, I encourage you to share Not Exactly Retired with them, too. Perhaps they will find it useful, or at least entertaining.

As always, I recommend you subscribe directly to the blog. If you’re just linking to it from Facebook, you’re missing out on some of the best stuff.

I also welcome your comments.

And now, on to the series and whatever comes after that. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly finished yet.