Happy Blogversary!

Today, this weblog becomes one year old.

Despite seemingly insurmountable odds – which include finals, the work week, and the author’s tendency to disappear on weekends to the land of mead and incapacity – the blog has managed to grow from a tiny speck to a slightly larger speck on the interwebs.

The statistics bear it out. The blog has been read in 56 different countries, as well as 48 of 50 of the United States. As soon as Montana and Alabama get their shit together, a full sweep of the electoral map will be mine.

Topics explored include Baseball (23 times), Cornell (38), Drinking (40), Insane People (25), Law School (77 times. FML), Mexicanity (17), Near Death Experiences (19) Poor Decisions (18), Rookie Mistakes (18), Poor Bastards (48), The Authorities (26), Staying in America (17 times, not tries) and Unnecessary Excesses (19 – including this list).

There have been growing pains, for sure. After writing thousand-word columns every week for four years, attaining the brevity inherent of a blog post is still a difficult task for me. My hope is people are bored enough at work or at school to slog through the whole thing. Well … hopefully you’re not bored at work or school, but if you are, then ideally this is a welcome diversion.

Overall, however, this experiment is working out quite nicely. Despite a tendency to overblog on some subjects (See Springsteen, Bruce; University, Cornell; and School, Law), for the most part I look to have a bit of randomness in here to serve average people like Joe the Reader. My only hope, as they say, is to entertain you. Why, my blog has even grown a twitter, which, in Bill Simmons’ words, can be considered the “deleted scenes to the blog’s DVD.”

Given that a month in blog time is like a year in normal time, I believe a year of blogging is an achievement somewhere along the scale of exercising for six months straight or reading five books in one month. It isn’t quite going to the moon, but it sure beats getting the high score in Frogger.

Next year will find our hero on his last year of law school, searching for a job/wife/green card, dreading his twenty-fifth birthday, and, most spectacular of all, growing a three-month Bar-pocalypse Beard. It should be epic indeed.

So now, before my pride pushes me into the falls, I’m going to buy my blog a birthday drink and pour it down the keyboard. Many happy returns.