英语美文：The Book of Awesome

 “通过专注于生活中积极的一面,我在最低谷的时候迎来了人生的高峰。” 

　　——尼尔·帕斯理查 
　　The Optimistic Part of Life 
　　Neil: It’s just a really rough world right now. We’ve got the ice caps melting, unemployment’s rising, gas prices are rising again, we’ve got pirates 1 in the ocean, wars overseas. It’s rough, and so 1000awesomethings.com is meant to be the two or three minutes in your day where you kinda get to forget how heavy the news is right now and talk about wearing underwear 3 just out of the dryer 4. And talking about finding a $10 bill in your old jacket pocket. You know, how ’bout the bakery air, when you walk into a bakery and you get that warm front of, like,1)croissants in your face. Everybody’s got their own, but there’s a lot of things that we can talk about to help us forget how rough it is out there, and so we can just sort of celebrate the optimistic part of life. 
　　My Inspiration 5 in “Beer + Friend” 
　　Interviewer: Do you draw your inspiration from anything other than everyday life? 
　　Neil: You know, more than anything, the inspiration really is grabbing 6 a beer and chicken wings with friends, and somebody deciding to go on a huge 2)rant at night and saying, “You know what’s awesome 2? When you like those little baby drumstick chicken wings and the guy you’re with likes those flat fat chicken wings, and you guys both like hot sauce, ’cause then you’ve met your perfect chicken wing partner.” And I remember that specific conversation happening, and, like, that was the next day’s blog post, so you could check in the 3)archives. The “perfect chicken wing partner,” you know, 4)spawned perfectly 7 from that conversation. And more than anything it’s people going on 5)hilarious rants 8 about something they find enjoyable, and instead of letting them die, all I do is just write them down. 
　　Significance of Every Post 
　　Interviewer: What’s the reaction been like? How have you found the reaction to the website from people who visit it? 
　　Neil: It’s been completely 6)surreal and7)overwhelming, you know. It’s...essentially 9 it’s the reaction and the positive reaction of it that’s kind of kept me really, really charged up about it, because whenever I have a tough week, where I’m staying up late and I’m just sort of like, “I don’t know how long I can do this,” 8)inevitably I get an e-mail from, you know, a preacher saying, “I use this in my 9)sermons every Sunday. Thank you.” 
　　Interviewer: Wow! 
　　Neil: And then I’ve got, you know, heavier e-mails, you know, often they’re people that have been 10)assaulted or 11)abused, people that, you know, suicidal teens, cancer patients, they’re very, very heavy and often very dark and they make me feel very lucky. But their message simply is, “you know, thank you because I’m having a lot of problems right now, and you’re reminding me that a lot of these awesome things are things I still get to experience. I still love the cold side of the pillow, so thanks for reminding me of that, such a great thing, and please don’t stop because I read it every day.”
　Two Advices for Bloggers 
　　Interviewer: What advice would you give to other aspiring 10 bloggers out there, who are following in your footsteps? 
　　Neil: Maybe it sounds like a 12)cliché, but I think you have to do what you love; you just 13)bluntly have to do it, and, you know, for me, I’ve never, sort of, forcibly tried to, you know, market the website or things like that. I think if you do what you love and you focus on it and you write every day, you will get better at it by doing it yourself. I think that’s the fir…you know, that’s sort of the biggest thing of all. And then the second thing I’d give in terms of advice is, do put some time disciplines on it. For me that was like every weekday twelve or one AM, counting down, and make it really obvious so that, if I failed and if I missed it, … 
　　Interviewer: People will hold you to it. 
　　Neil: … Yep. It’s really helpful in a way because it forces you to be there for it.