Hello, all, and welcome to the new digs. I first founded the Beervana blog in February 2006, and it has lived as a Blogspot domain throughout its life. You may imagine that it wasn't so tacky to have a blogspot blog in 2006, but you'd be wrong. Perhaps not as tacky, but tacky nonetheless. This blog has been a long time coming.
Read MoreI'm just beginning year eight of full-time writing, and the project of supporting myself remains a work in progress. Writing itself pays crap, as most people are no doubt aware. There is a tier of professional nonfiction writing that is very lucrative (your Ta Nahisi Coates, Michael Lewises, and Malcolm Gladwells). Somewhere below that tier is the one I'm on--where it's possible to publish books and articles to your heart's content and still not make enough to live on. The entire enterprise of publishing--newspapers, magazines, books, online--has been hemorrhaging money for years, and there's less and less of it to go around.
Read MoreIndulge me, if you will, with one last end-of-the-year post. As part of my year-end routine, I went back and looked at the top posts of the year, as measured by the number of direct visits--which basically indicates which posts went viral. When people start sharing my posts on social media, it sends people to direct links, and Google tracks those. Now, of course, there's no arguing that every post on this blog is a delight, so there are no wrong answers here. And yet...
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