Three years

The blog is now a toddler.

Three years ago today, I started this blog with the expectation to write about my travels in Australia. Here is my first post. And here we are at the end of 2014, 224 posts and 200,000 words later, and I’m still here.

Over the last few years, we’ve developed a bit of a following. We’ve grown the regular readership from four all the way up to double digits. The interview series has been a huge driver of growth – the blog has been linked by Arthur Chu (20,000 followers) and Eddy Elfenbein (18,000 followers) and StockTwits (395,000 followers) and River Avenue Blues (16,000 followers), and at least three other blogs and websites on the interwebs.

We’ve had visitors from – if you can believe it – 65 different countries, including Malta and Suriname and Belize and Qatar and Slovenia and Bahrain. It’s been awesome to see so many new readers, even though most of them have no idea who I am or what I write about.

I have no plans to ever stop writing here regularly. Until 2091. By the time I turn 100, I’ll have said everything I’ve wanted to say. So, assuming this blog lasts another 77 years, we will see many things together.

We’ll see the Cubs win a World Series. We’ll see the Dow break 100,000. We’ll see a 16 seed beat a 1 seed. We’ll see wars and treaties and acts of terrorism and acts of kindness and acts of heroism.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we’ll see a revolution in nanotechnology. We’ll see phone calls that entail three-dimensional holographic images of both people. We’ll see genetically engineered pathogens, mind uploading, full-immersion virtual realities, the singularity.

We’ll see the remaining 83 posts in my train stories segment.

We’ll see the return of Halley’s Comet in 2061.

We’ll see the tricentennial, a dozen or so Presidents, new amendments, new laws, progress.

We’ll see the return of clearly definable decades. The 20s, the 30s, the 40s. Where will we make the distinction between the 20th and 21st century?

We’ll see plenty of deaths – actors and athletes and politicians and friends and family. By the time this blog concludes, almost everyone we know today will be dead. And, yeah, that’s a morbid thought, but that’s life man. Man is born, man lives, man dies. But we still have a long way to go. I hope you will join me.