Overall, 2023 was a successful year for me. You may notice that I haven't posted a lot here -- only 4 posts including this one this year. And this was by design. My biggest goal was to reach more people, and I chose other avenues to successfully reach a larger audience. And believe me -- when I retire from my day job some time in the next 9 years, you'll hear a lot more from me here.
This year, my biggest success has been with my music business, Melkim Publishing. This may end up being our largest revenue year -- we'll have to see when I do the annual number crunching. (Oh, and if you read this in time, the Christmas Sale ends at the end of 12/31/2023.) I launched Melkim Audio, which will produce albums of music featuring many of the sheet music we sell, and also some other items -- we'll see how big this gets. Together with preparing the launch of orchestrations (which will come out next year), this album prep took most of my production time.
Our first album, Christmas Celebration, features the composers, Daniel Carter and me, playing our own arrangements. If you haven't yet heard it yet, you can check it out here. (And yes -- it's still officially Christmas season.) You can check out the project that took up nearly half of my productive time this year. Looking at the stats, these past two months, this music on Spotify alone has reached more than 5 or 6 times the number of people my blogs reached over the same time period, and I haven't yet seen stats on other outlets yet. A moderate win.
Also, this year, I've had my first orchestral debut. The Ensign Symphony & Chorus performed my "Come, Come, Ye Saints" in October in Seattle's own Benaroya Hall.
I also started a new semi-"live" series: Mel At the Piano, featuring 7 episodes, but then I stopped because the editing was just taking up too much of my time. So -- I've downloaded OBS so that I can do truly-live videos, cutting out all the expensive editing time. I'll start this series back up some time in 2024.
In the Econo-Mel, I posted only once -- explaining two reasons I haven't waxed politically. One is because I'm short on time, and Two is because today's political environment has gotten to be VERY toxic -- such that many are losing their jobs just because they said the "wrong" things online.
I've continued the same pace with The Music of Mel, now featuring more posts tied to Melkim Publishing. If anything, I'm planning to contribute more to this blog over the next couple of years, as it's in line with my most immediate goals.
I've also kept the pace constant with The Mormon Mel, which I think is being driven mainly by my short story series: The Adventures of Elder Elder and Elder Benjamin. This year I wrote 4 new episodes. Plus, a few months ago, I mapped out the entire series, and have started producing each story more in chronological order now. Looking ahead, I'm planning on producing one story each month, so we should get 12 more in 2024. When it's all done, I'll put them all together in a book -- in all there will be 34 episodes.
Always Be Better got 5 more videos. I'm proud of each one, but this output is low compared to before. But then again, I warned everyone beforehand I was going to slow down for a while.
My favorite posts this past year:
Visiting Wieners and Losers: I just had a lot of fun putting this one together -- a lot of work and fun. I tour a local 80's arcade museum, and I happen to run into Wayne and Garth.
What will 2024 bring? We'll see shortly. I'm going to keep pushing forward, and keep busy, enjoying life.
