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May 6, 2012

Happy gapingvoid Birthday! My Blog Turns Eleven…

10 Comments

Over the wee­kend, gapingvoid.com tur­ned ele­ven years old.

I won’t dwell on it too much, other than to say,

1. Yes, it has been an ama­zing trip,

2. Thank you very much for all the love over the years and,

3. Loo­king back, I con­si­der “Per­so­nal Faves” (2001) to be the best thing on it that I ever wrote. Writ­ten as I was set­ting the blog up, it set the tone for what came after– “How To Crea­tive”, “The Hugh­train”, “Evil Plans”, “Free­dom Is Blog­ging”, then the actual gaping­void busi­ness itself, the “cube gre­na­des” and the great team of peo­ple I work with etc– it all came from that. And I  honestly, honestly doubt that I would had come this far without it:

When I first lived in Manhat­tan in Decem­ber, 1997 I got into the habit of dood­ling on the back of busi­ness cards, just to give me something to do while sit­ting at the bar. The for­mat stuck.

All I had when I first got to Manhat­tan were 2 suit­ca­ses, a cou­ple of card­board boxes full of stuff, a reser­va­tion at the YMCA, and a 10-day free­lance copyw­ri­ting gig at a Mid­town adver­ti­sing agency.

My life for the next cou­ple of weeks was going to work, wal­king around the city, and stag­ge­ring back to the YMCA once the bars clo­sed. Lots of alcohol and cof­fee shops. Lot of weird peo­ple. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simul­ta­neously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.

[…]

An artist is quite a f*****-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recom­mend it to any­body. Still, in my collec­tion there are a cou­ple of exam­ples that, in some sick and twis­ted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minu­tes, at least…

Any­way, for those who hadn’t seen it before, I thought it was worth sha­ring [Here’s the link again]. Again, thanks for all the love, and God­bless. Now I have some more car­toons to draw. Rock on.

Tags: Hugh MacLeod, Hugh's books

10 Responses to “Happy gapingvoid Birthday! My Blog Turns Eleven…”

1. HarisMujkic says:

   May 6, 2012 at 6:15 PM

   O man. You are not only the ins­pi­ra­tion for art and mar­ke­ting world, you have pro­gram­mers in your audience. The thing I like about your art, it’s not about the mes­sage that has some kind of expi­ra­tion date. They are uni­ver­sal. I already see far future where peo­ple are using Steve Jobs quo­tes and yours too. It’s not about the money, it’s not about the popu­la­rity. You are lea­ving a huge legacy.

   Thank you Hugh.

   Reply
   • Hugh MacLeod says:

     May 6, 2012 at 6:37 PM

     Thanks, Haris! Very kind

     Reply
2. Kathy Sierra says:

   May 6, 2012 at 7:22 PM

   Thank-YOU for all you have given US! And Happy blog birth­day. I would never have had any­body rea­ding my blog were it not for yours (I first dip­ped my toe in the blog water here at Gaing­void). Bet­ween this post (well, re-reading your faves) and your new book remin­ding me of what I lost when I quit blog­ging, I’m nearly ins­pi­red to start again.

   You’ve ins­pi­red so so so many of us, and here you are, still doing that.

   Reply
3. Sheila Foley says:

   May 6, 2012 at 9:48 PM

   Such an ove­rachie­ver: a new ven­ture (social object fac­tory), a new book, and now the birth­day of your blog! What’s next? Oh, I know — world domination.

   Reply
4. Andrew Paterson says:

   May 7, 2012 at 4:44 PM

   Hugh,

   First of all, thank you for all your gifts.

   You have and will con­ti­nue to be an ins­pi­ra­tion for thou­sands of peo­ple (and pro­bably many more as time and sha­ring goes on); your angle on life as a whole is uni­que and I can only urge you to keep it up.

   I guess there’s no bet­ter way to thank you than saying that I will con­ti­nue to spread your dra­wings and words of wis­dom as far as I can reach and will pur­sue scou­ting my email inbox each day in search for your bots email.

   Once again, bravo and thumbs up !

   Andrew

   Reply
   • Hugh MacLeod says:

     May 8, 2012 at 10:03 AM

     Thanks, Andrew Yeah, sprea­ding the word helps me out tons, Thanks Again

     Reply
5. Dennis Howlett says:

   May 8, 2012 at 8:04 AM

   Yep — got that in my office ‘Hugh’ collection.

   Reply
6. Andreas Kopp says:

   May 8, 2012 at 10:42 AM

   7 already! So your blog is in first grade already!!

   We were tal­king at your Videochat event and you men­tio­ned a friend that did a post-it show a cou­ple of years ago.

   Would you mind pas­sing me his name? I want to pro­file a cou­ple of artists that work with post-it notes.

   Many thanks

   Andreas

   Reply
   • Hugh MacLeod says:

     May 8, 2012 at 12:48 PM

     Hi Andreas.…

     http://www.savagechickens.com/

     That’s the only one that I know of, off the top of my head…

     Reply
7. billy says:

   May 24, 2012 at 5:15 PM

   LOL happy birthday!

   Reply