1000 Awesome Things

One of my favorite blogs is 1000 Awesome Things written by Neil Pasricha.  Several years ago, Neil embarked on a journey to document all the awesome things about life. Okay, maybe not all the things, but at least the top 1000. Each day, Neil would document an awesome aspect of human life, ranging from "The Take a Penny, Leave a Penny Bowl", "The Smell of Play-Doh", "Old People Pants", and everything in between.  From the outset, Neil combats cynicism by exploring the world to find crazy things that make people laugh and smile, and he treats it with a rhetoric that engages his reader.  At no point in his blog does he claim or pretend to be an academic, but rather just a guy from Toronto, Canada who documents the human experience, one awesome thing at a time.

Neil started the blog on June 20, 2008 with a post titled "Broccoflower", and since then he has blogged almost every single day on a myriad of topics.  Some of his posts are only a sentence long while others can go out for a thousand words are more, delving into deep detail about the topic.  Each post, however, often elicits the response, "You're right! I totally never thought of it like that!" from the reader.  In addition, a staple of his blog is that he ends every single post by weaving his concluding sentence into the word "AWESOME!"  Neil completed his list on April 19, 2012 with a post titled "Anything you want it to be", and it is the only post that is entirely blank.

Neil found a perfect ending.  Over the course of almost four years, the blog took on a life of its own.  It's popularity exploded, and it even lead to two books being published titled The Book of Awesome.  There was a massive following of people that contributed in the comments section, some even contributing their own ideas.  As everyone sat on pins and needles to find out what was number one, Neil made it very clear that the list no longer belonged to him.  He shared it with the world.  This is perhaps what I find most fascinating about this blog.  There was comfort in its finality.

While most blogs can just go on and on forever, offering a new perspective daily, I knew 1000 Awesome Things was going to end.  I knew that at some point, there would not be another post, and I enjoyed that.  I enjoyed that at some point, I would turn the last page and there would be no more. Neil documented the human experience better than almost any academic I have ever witnessed because he chose to look at the big and small things that make everyday unique. At the same time, he looked at the big and small things that made us all relate.  In my blog, I am trying to understand the way the human experience changes when it moves online with a loose sense of nostalgia for old forms of communication.  1000 Awesome Things is built on nostalgia.  Neil explores his childhood, and at the same time he explores mine.

I won't be updating my blog nearly as much, nor do I expect to garner the same following, but there is a lot to learn from 1000 Awesome Things. It is easy to get caught behind a singular mind trying to combat the forces of deteriorating human connection, but I need to maintain a wide perspective.  Just because my opinion can appear predominantly cynical, when I open my eyes I can still take into account that the world really is AWESOME!