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Canadian blogger Neil Pasricha - Source: Reuters
Depressed by reading bad news daily and with his marriage
failing, Canadian Neil Pasricha decided to try to focus on the
positive and come up with 1,000 simple, free, awesome things,
posting one each day on a blog.
Pasricha said his
blog aimed to highlight life's
simple pleasures often taken for granted such as finding forgotten
money in a pocket, putting on underwear straight from the dryer, or
fixing electronics with a smack.
Little did he realise his blog would strike a nerve and attract
40,000 people daily to join his discussions on how to enjoy the
last triangle of a potato crisp at the bottom of the bag or the
pleasure of laughing so hard that you cry.
Pasricha, 30, who works in human resources in Toronto, was amazed
to win two Webby awards, which are known as the Oscars of the
Internet, at the same time that his marriage did break up and one
of his closest friends committed suicide.
Then amid his personal dramas and woes of an economic crisis, he
also sealed a book deal, with The Book of Awesome containing 200 of
his awesome things due out this week.
"I turned the worst year of my life into my best year by focusing
on the positive. On Amazon I am ranked higher than the Dalai Lama
and I think it is a sign that people want optimism to come back,"
Pasricha told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"Every day I try to find something that is awesome, free and
universal to share like popping bubble wrap, the smell of a bakery
or when a cashier opens up a new lane at a store."
Pasricha said when he began his blog in June 2008 he thought he
might have trouble coming up with 1,000 simple, awesome moments in
life but now he is more than halfway through and ideas keep
flooding in, from himself and from followers of his blog.
"The idea of having a countdown of great things is almost as
cliché as you can get but I was trying to define a new
nuance of awesome - things we know are awesome but we just don't
say out loud or talk to other people about," he said, citing the
example of the satisfying final few seconds of untangling a tricky
knot.
"These moments can start a huge conversation. Most of our life is
really about hitting green lights on the way home from or waking up
before your alarm goes off and realising you have more time in bed
but it is those small moments we forget about."
Despite the success of his blog and with his book coming out,
Pasricha said he has no intentions of changing his daily
life.
"I commute an hour a day to a job in the suburbs and I work in a
cubicle. I like work because I like the people I work with. I'm not
a writer and I don't know how to use a semi colon. I just like
observing the world and documenting it," he said
