I started writing 1000 Awesome Things on June 20, 2008 as my life was swirling and twirling.
It seemed like every day was cloudy as every morning I’d wheel my car up icy onramps straight into red-light traffic jams to head to my office job in the suburbs. Then I’d wheel back home the same way, every day. Frozen burritos and back pain, up those ramps and down again, my life seemed stuck in neutral with a black scribbly cloud above my head.
One night after work I went online and typed “How to start a blog” into Google. Ten minutes later I wrote #1000 Broccoflower for a quick smile before bed. As my marriage crumbled like crackers, as my best friend sadly took his own life, I was trying to push from back pain to grass stains and from microwaves to wedding buffets.
Nobody visited the site except for my mom. Although I did get pretty excited when she forwarded it to my dad and the traffic doubled. Then on July 18, 2008 Fark.com linked to old, dangerous playground equipment and thousands of people suddenly came in waves. It was strange thinking that cyber travellers spinning on the other side of the planet maybe thought broccoflower was funny, too.
And here we are in 2015 after jotting down one awesome thing every weekday for the past few years and it’s been such a rush. I feel so massively lucky that I’ve had a few extra hours each week to chat with you all about bakery air, rain hair, bubble wrap, and illegal naps.
The Book of (Even More) Awesome came out this day four years ago and The Book of Awesome has been on bestseller lists for six years. Cybernerds called us best blog in the world and the awesome movement is in full force.
I don’t know how to thank you for all of this.
The only way I can think of is to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for reading, thank you for listening, thank you for commenting, and thank you for spreading our big screaming all-caps word of
AWESOME!
— Photos from The Book of Awesome launch —
