About two years ago I noticed something funny as I flipped through a grocery store flyer. On the produce page was an ugly, green-looking cauliflower, with the caption “$2.99! Broccoflower!” It was hilarious. A green cauliflower labelled as a Broccoflower. The bizarre misfit child … | Continue reading
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AWESOME! — Hey everyone! This is Neil Pasricha. I originally wrote these 1000 awesome things for 1000 straight weekdays from 2008 to 2012. I’ve had so many requests to repost them so I’ve now done so … | Continue reading
Over dinner one night my dad started telling me about his first day in Canada. It was 1968 and he was twenty-three, arriving on a plane with eight dollars in his pocket to start a new life by himself in a country he had never visited. “A community group had a welcome dinner for n … | Continue reading
It’s where the wild things are. See, we’ll never really know how far the universe flies but maybe we should be wondering how far our minds go inside. Because when you let your thoughts run free … they bounce all over the place. When your brain slips into the basement … it zooms t … | Continue reading
Today’s the greatest day you’ve ever lived. Today’s the only day you’ve ever lived. The past is gone, the future is far, nothing else matters, except where you are. AWESOME! Thank you to the talented Misty Harris for a great tribute to 1000 Awesome Things. Photo from: here | Continue reading
Burn, baby, burn. Life’s not long and we only got so many moments we’re wide awake. So take, take, take — grab that run at sunrise, laugh with baby before the door, clock into work with energy, and clock out looking for more. Run to that soccer practice, grab ice cream when it en … | Continue reading
My friend Jason had a tradition. Every year on the last day of school he’d stop on the bridge over the creek on his walk home, pop open all his three-hole binders, and dump and shake all his pen-scrawled notes and sticker-covered tests into the bubbling rapids below. Somehow the … | Continue reading
We’re all just twisted messes. Sure, you might look fine in your pleated pants and your frilly dresses, but beneath all that we’re just twisted messes. Brown slippery organs, brittle bones, and bubbling blood cramp every tight little space in your body’s homeplace, fool. Sometime … | Continue reading
This is the end, beautiful friend. Late next week 1000 Awesome Things will hit #1 and we’ll have finished four years counting down one awesome thing every weekday. So… like Luke Skywalker’s triumphant final battle against the Fish Monsters, the Jamaican bobsled team’s mighty last … | Continue reading
Because you finally satisfy your toughest critic. Yourself. AWESOME! Photo from: here | Continue reading
Do you remember bank calendars? When I was little my sister and I always waited between velvet ropes with my dad to see the bank teller — while lines rounded, stamps pounded, and thumbs counted, bills. Sometimes we grabbed faded pink and green deposit slips — the ones printed on … | Continue reading
When my friends Chris, Ty, and I went on our cross-country road trip a few years back, we managed to stop in the small, hardscrabble dirt town of Paris, Texas. In addition to visiting the Kimberly-Clark diaper factory, miniature Eiffel Tower, and famous Jesus in Cowboy Boots stat … | Continue reading
My sister’s name is Nina. She was born sixteen months after me and we were tight from the beginning. When my parents brought her home from the hospital I couldn’t stop marveling at her thick chock of black hair, tiny smudge of a nose, and tightly closed eyes. We traveled together … | Continue reading
Welcome to the inner circle. AWESOME! Photo from: here | Continue reading
Everybody gets born. One day you popped into the world a tiny ball of crying wet nakedness and every year since then we’ve all stopped to celebrate your big day. Birthdays freeze time as you stare back at last year and get ready to celebrate what’s coming around the bend… When yo … | Continue reading
Come on in. We all know that being a regular doesn’t just happen overnight. No, it’s more like softly falling into a slow romance with a new friend… Stage 1: The First Glance. There are plenty of fish in the sea but you slowly choose one. Maybe it’s the big coffee cups, the wrink … | Continue reading
Bringing down the house. When your party spins till the disco ball stops and the lights go pop then you know you’re having a great time. Big toes peeking through nylons, tongues hanging out like dogs, bangs sweatglued to your forehead — you’re groggily stumbling out the door, itc … | Continue reading
“How often do you think?” My eleventh grade English teacher interrupted class one day with that booming question. Until then we’d been having staple fights, passing notes, and half-assedly working on book reports about Brave New World. “How often do you actually sit back and thin … | Continue reading
You know what’s the worst? Trying to figure out how to get somewhere in a city you’ve never been before. Yes, strange bus routes, new taxi systems, and mazes of complex maps welcome you to your business trip, weekend getaway, or family vacation. When you arrive you’re confronted … | Continue reading
Your life is a pinball. Shooting up high you start bouncing between bumpers and fly between flippers which smack you every which way. Your life soars and crashes in ways you can’t predict. First loves with teenage girls, secret kisses in college worlds, all shape your heart and w … | Continue reading
Get out of here. Lights flash, bulbs blast, and twisted thoughts race around our brains. But handshakes and smiles tire after a while and sometimes all you want is chill time on your own. That’s when it’s time to trade dress pants for sweatpants, sweatpants for less pants, and sc … | Continue reading
I met Gloria in September, 2008. I was camping out at an Arizona hotel for work and she was the hotel bartender. A sassy fiftysomething with frizzy white hair, classy black clothes, and bright red lipstick, Gloria was the soul of the place who had been there for years. Twice marr … | Continue reading
They show up in the dark. And when you look up in the dark you see their twinkling beauty, burning yesterday, light years away. Stars remind us how small we are, how far we’ve come, how fast we’re flying, and how we’re never all done. Atoms inside us were in outer space one day … … | Continue reading
Cruising through the streets with our music cranked and our cell phones ringing, it’s sometimes hard to communicate with other drivers sharing the roads. When speeds are high and time’s a ticking, we rely on silent gestures flashed through tinted windows to get our points across. … | Continue reading
What’s a birthday without some loot? Let’s get this party finished right: Level 1: The Factory Order. Here’s where mom orders the Barbie, Hot Wheels, or Sesame Street themed birthday kit and it comes with pointy hats, paper plates, and loot bags for all. Now, these bags are usual … | Continue reading
AWESOME! Photos from: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here | Continue reading
I was flipping past a reality show on TV and there was this group of dirty folks in rags stranded on some desert island. They had no food, no showers, and nothing to do except brutally fight each other to avoid getting booted off the show. In the span of a few minutes, I saw … | Continue reading
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. No matter what, if you’re working for The Man, there’s a chance you’re getting paid every two weeks. Maybe every other Thursday or every other Friday, maybe dollars dropped into bank accounts or fistfuls of change dropped into sweaty palms. All … | Continue reading
What do you do? Me, I work in an office but if I try telling people more than that their eyes gloss over. “You lost me at spreadsheets,” my friends say, while yawning and giving the waiter a head nod and ghost pour for another beer. But I get that — jobs are complicated and … | Continue reading
It’s the suburban amusement park. When I was a kid there was nothing as exciting as driving through the car wash with my dad. My sister Nina and I would jump up and down screaming as huge cloth rollers smacked the side of our station wagon like zombies. Jet streams of water splas … | Continue reading
It’s always the sweetest. 1. Chicklet style. It’s time to crush that hard outer white shell into a million little pieces. You can do the first bite with your two front teeth (aka The Bugs Bunny) or you can get your back molars in the game from the beginning. Either way, the first … | Continue reading
It’s the crack of dawn on Saturday. You’re up before your parents so it’s time to tiptoe downstairs in your thin Spider-Man pajamas, sneak into the kitchen, and pour three servings of Corn Pops into a heavy ceramic bowl. Next, carefully carry it to the family room, slide onto you … | Continue reading
AWESOME! Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet | Continue reading
We’re all bad at names but some faces just stick in our brains. Yes, when you see Familiar Brown-Haired Man walk by the bus stop or Curly Redhead Lady eating fries in the food court you suddenly do a double-take and think “Wait … I know them from somewhere.” That’s when you stop … | Continue reading
Kids make things easy. Back in third or fourth grade I remember our tiny eight-year-old dating circle well. Basically, if a guy asked you out, and you said yes, then you went on the slides together, you were boyfriend and girlfriend, and life was simple. No flowers, no dating, no … | Continue reading
One day is not enough. Seriously, the name birthday itself implies that annual celebrations of your life must be squeezed into twenty-four hours. Just one day? That’s not nearly enough time to celebrate good times, come on: 1. Besties dinner. It’s the intimate night with your clo … | Continue reading
My friend Allison is obsessed with The Last Taste. Out at a restaurant, sitting on a deck, over at a friend’s for a potluck, it doesn’t matter. “No meal should end with anything less than the best taste possible,” she’ll say, while devouring the pink and juicy inner-cube of steak … | Continue reading
Things to do when we get old: Run up staircases. Laugh so hard we snort and then laugh some more. Make funny faces at little kids on the bus. Run on snowy sidewalks and slide across frozen puddles. Start laughing out loud when anyone farts in public. Jump through sprinklers in th … | Continue reading
Best planet ever. AWESOME! Photos from: here, here, here, here, here, and here | Continue reading
Work can be stressful. Big deadlines and late nights, tough customers and tough fights, and killer projects that mean try as you might, you can’t get it right. Toss in confusing plans and traffic jams and sometimes you’re spinning, gninnips, spinning, dizzy and alone, in cubicle … | Continue reading
No offense fire, wheel, and printing press. But blankets are the greatest technology ever invented. Yes, there we were, running around naked in the plains — shivering in the rains, slipping in mud stains, losing heat from our brains — when one of our Cave Grandparents thought of … | Continue reading
My bedroom was above the kitchen growing up. Late at night while laying in bed I would often listen to the creaks and cracks through the vents and floorboards. Oven burners wobbled and popped, distant thumps echoed through the furnace room, and the fridge cranked its whirring mot … | Continue reading
AWESOME! Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet | Continue reading
Weird thump, strange lump, funny bump? It’s nothing. AWESOME! Photo from: here | Continue reading
What was your worst job ever? Yes, we were chatting about bad jobs the other night and I said unclogging grease traps with my bare hands was at the top of my list. Pulling out that rusty Black Box of Death from under the triple-sink released a foul Rotting Meat Scraps From Six Mo … | Continue reading
Get clickin’. There are three big ways the deed goes down: 1. The Non-Stopper. You’re mindless fiddling with a pen when you notice it’s got a great spring… so you start clicking it over and over again. Your brain gets into a rhythm with the sound so you click faster and faster an … | Continue reading
AWESOME! Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet | Continue reading