I am a week away from my 1000th post. I have written 1.3
million words since I started in August in 2002. I've had 1,350,000
page views since I starting counting in April of 2004. There are a couple of thousand visitors a day. Bless you, one and all.
I did my first post in early 2002, I guess it was. And then I gave up. I thought, "Everyone's writing. No one's reading. What, really, is the point?" I happened to see Virginia Postrel at a conference. She said, "Oh, no, things are changing. You have to start again." So I did. Blame Virginia.
Six years later blogging proves a relatively simple process. It takes about an hour a day. I can't blog about the work I do for clients, but there is always some idea buzzing about that can serve as a talking point.
Relatives no longer scorn my blogging as "pretend writing." I think all bloggers are feeling a little less marginal. When were we vindicated? Sometime, in the last 12 months I guess. I always felt my obscurity was hard earned and well deserved, and I bid it farewell with some sadness.
The real challenge recently has been excavating 1.3 million words for the books within the blog. But to find these books meant chipping away 1.1 million words. Tough! A clear demonstration why it is always easier to build new than to renovate. Hey, but eventually two quite interesting books emerged, one of branding, one of the new impulses shaping contemporary culture. (Publishers looking for manuscripts on same, please let me know.)
But books are old media and no longer the obvious form for knowledge to take. And I am now read by lots of people after they drop a key word into Google. And in this form, I get read by people interested in how Craig Ferguson, Peter Drucker, Alec Wildenstein, and Lawrence Summers, (TV personality, management guru, plastic surgery enthusiast and university president, respectively). They come to this blog because they are interested in the cultural implications of pets, doing ethnography at McDonald's, the life of an anthropologist working in Russia and China.
"Oh, he's all over the map," someone will surely say. Not at all. Proof of concept, I call it. Anthropologists do not specialize. It's the death of their specialty. The idea is to cast the net wide. To find culture in all of its manifestations. Proof of concept, proof of anthropologist. The anthropologist who can't or won't cast the net wide isn't an anthropologist.
Anyhow, that's my excuse for 1.3 million words. Thanks for reading some of them.
References
McCracken, Grant. 2005. President Summers, Beware the Yalies Within. This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. March 23, 2005. here.
McCracken, Grant. 2006. Sanya, the Wonder Cat. This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. June 28, 2006. here.
McCracken, Grant. 2006. Meet Rosie: scourge of the new advertising. This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. October 27, 2006. here.
McCracken, Grant. 2006. Craig Ferguson (brand exemplar?) This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. December 21, 2006. here.
McCracken, Grant. 2007. The Charlie and Barney Show: birth of a new American male?
This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. January 3, 2007. here.
Photo
Molly and me, photo by Pam.
mil congrats to you. so the blog is an aries. i should have known. according to wikipedia:
The following traits are widely associated with this sign:
Self-confidence
Courage
Impatience
Impulsivity
Enthusiasm
Initiative
Leadership
Opinionated
Forceful
Irritable
Straightforward
Posted by: LK | March 25, 2008 at 08:01 PM
Mazel tov!
And did we just get a picture of you as part of the celebration? Or had I just not read enough of the 1,000.
Three cheers for your generalism-through-a-lens. Keeps me happy!
Posted by: communicatrix | March 25, 2008 at 08:42 PM
Oh--and, Grant, you don't look a day over 999.
Sorry. Sorry. Couldn't let it go...
Posted by: communicatrix | March 25, 2008 at 10:55 PM
Well that is certainly something to celebrate! Congrats.
Posted by: Gavin Heaton | March 25, 2008 at 11:27 PM
And thanks for writing all of them.
Posted by: Jim Dingwall | March 26, 2008 at 02:21 AM
Here's to the next 1000 posts, Grant! You may be all over the map (a good thing, IMO), but who else even knows the map is there?
As to the social cachet of books, I've always thought they were a fad which would soon pass. Carved stone tablets and knots tied in string are sure to outlast books!
Posted by: peter | March 26, 2008 at 05:12 AM
Congrats! Thanks for 1000 nuggets of awesome.
Posted by: IshMEL | March 26, 2008 at 09:43 AM
Kudos and thank you, Grant.
- Ed
Posted by: Ed Batista | March 26, 2008 at 03:24 PM
The photo is perfect: curious as a cat. Kudos . . . and thanks.
- Tom
Posted by: Tom Asacker | March 27, 2008 at 08:00 AM
Congratulations Grant! Love the blog and the love photo very nice. It's beena terrific pleasure for me to follow your blog for the last couple years. I wonder...what will you write about on the actual 1,000th post...hmmm....I better pop back next week!
Cheers,
Candy
Posted by: Candy Minx | March 28, 2008 at 04:10 AM
Congrats Grant! May I ask for 6 more words? I have tagged you as part of the 6-word memoir meme. Rules and more are here. I hope you play.
http://incentive-intelligence.typepad.com/incentive_intelligence/2008/03/decades-into-6.html
Posted by: Paul Hebert | March 31, 2008 at 06:27 AM