It’s a big day!
Today is the twentieth anniversary of my blog — Grin and Bare It — and its earlier permutations, Perpetual Perpetuity and Conform Me Not.
My blogging career began on December 10, 2005. In the fall of 2005, I took a class on blogging at Trinity College with Colin McEnroe. Part of that assignment was to create an actual blog, which I did. That first blog contained only class assignments, but once I finished the course, I began blogging on my own, titling it Perpetual Perpetuity.
That blog existed from December 10, 2005, through June 11, 2007, when I removed it from the internet after an anonymous group of cowards excerpted it in deliberately deceitful and misleading ways to compile a 30-page packet plus letters demanding that I be fired from my position as a teacher based on the things I wrote.
They sent that packet to the Superintendent, the Board of Education, the Town Council, and ultimately about 200 families in my school district. They compared me to the Virginia Tech killer, complained that I was benefiting from favoritism in our school, and implied that I was a sexual deviant.
They signed their work “The Concerned Parent Body of West Hartford,” though it was quickly determined that they were not who they claimed to be.
It was primarily the work of a teacher or a small group of teachers, with a parent or two possibly assisting.
Here is just one example of their deceit:
Under the heading “Favoritism” in the packet, these cowards excerpted a line that said:
“My principal encouraged us to take the day off tomorrow. We won’t, but it was incredibly nice for him to offer.”
They didn’t mention that he spoke these words just minutes after I learned that my mother had died.
It was example after example of this kind of deception. The packet also featured some terrible formatting, a whole bunch of poorly written sentences, and some nonsensical content. It also included content that the author did not like, but in no way indicated that I was violent or dangerous, as they claimed.
The authors of the packet also called for the firing of Elysha and my principal. They also threatened to take their concerns to the press and to pursue “legal action” if their demands were not met.
It was an incredibly difficult time in our lives.
I’ve been writing the story of those days on a free Substack here.
A few specific things motivated these monsters’ actions, including my winning West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year in 2006 and becoming one of three finalists for Connecticut Teacher of the Year.
Other things, too, which you can read about on my Substack.
It was quite an adventure. Ultimately, the ordeal involved a team of attorneys, a police investigation, Human Resources, the superintendent, a relentlessly supportive group of colleagues, and an actual concerned parent body of West Hartford rising up in a spectacular, almost cinematic way, demanding that I continue to teach their children.
It’s quite a story.
More than 18 years after that act of cowardice and deceit, I’m still standing, doing my job, loving my career, and still writing this blog, and those unnamed cowards remain hidden under some rock where they belong.
Happily, I still have the content from that first blog — every single post. I’ve re-posted some of the more relevant and evergreen content over the years on subsequent blogs, but most remain on my hard drive. Maybe someday I’ll return the blog to the internet just for spite.
The last post on the day I took that blog off the internet was this:
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I see Elysha half-naked every day! All the way naked, too!
The photographer at Saturday’s wedding informed me that lingerie photos are the latest wedding craze. Brides are giving their future husbands photo albums of themselves wearing lingerie as a wedding gift.
I don’t get it.
Can’t the average husband expect to see his wife in lingerie from time to time, and if so, why the need for a photo album? If a bride is so willing to pose in lingerie for a stranger with a camera, isn’t it reasonable to expect that she will occasionally don a negligee or teddy in the presence of the love of her life?
Elysha gave me a new golf bag and a sand wedge on our wedding day, and this was better than a slew of half-naked photos.
I can see Elysha half-naked every day. Fully naked, too! I don’t need a photo album to remind me how good she looks.
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As you can see, not much has changed since 2007.
After removing that first blog from the internet at my school district’s request, I stopped blogging for precisely zero days before launching a new blog titled Conform Me Not.
Amid a public firestorm over my first blog and fighting for my job and future, I refused to be deterred. Conform Me Not was initially launched quietly, without any publicity, but as I began winning battles that summer and ensuring that my teaching position was secure, I started letting people know I was writing again.
That blog existed on conformmenot.com until recently. Typepad, the service that I used to write the blog, went out of business earlier this year.
I have all of those posts, too.
Elysha designed the mastheads of my early blogs. This is the masthead for conformmenot.com.
Conform Me Not ran from June 25, 2007, through November 1, 2008, when I switched from a purely blogging platform to a website that also supported blogging. By then, I had published my first novel and realized I needed a place for readers to land that included more than just a blog. I needed links to my books, a schedule of my author talks, and more.
So began Grin and Bare It, which I am still writing today.
That’s 20 years of writing a post without missing a day.
Not always a good post, mind you. Looking back, some are ridiculous, purposeless, and moronic. Some of my opinions, in retrospect, are ill-informed and stupid. Not surprisingly, I have changed over time, and my blog represents that in all its ugliness and glory.
But quite a few posts are pretty great, too. Things I’m proud to have written.
If you do the math, that’s 7,305 consecutive days of blogging.
More than 7,305 actual posts, though, since there were many days, especially in the past, when I would post more than once on a single day.
8,818 posts in total, counting this one.
A diary of sorts, except instead of cataloging just the events of the day (which I sometimes do), my posts often reflect my thoughts of the day. Opinions, feelings, arguments, beliefs, questions, and rants.
Occasionally, something sweet.
I’m so grateful for the last 20 years of blog posts. Not only have I created a written record of my life, but blogging has proven to be an excellent training ground for my storytelling, comedy, public speaking, and the magazine columns and newspaper pieces I write today.
When you’re required to say something every day, you get really good at generating new ideas.
I’ve also met an enormous number of people through blogging. Some have gotten to know me online, and others have become friends in real life. My life is filled with acquaintances and friends whom I would’ve never met had I not been writing every day.
My blog is also an excellent way to stay connected to friends, especially those who have moved away. Though we can’t talk daily, many read every day and send me emails or messages on social media, keeping us connected.
Yes, it also created an enormous problem for me in 2007, but even that will likely work out well. It will probably become the subject of a memoir, including previously undisclosed information on the horrible people responsible for the attack on me, Elysha, and my principal, including many things that I have never spoken about before.
It’s quite the story.
Also, I didn’t do anything wrong. It took purposeful deceit to make me look terrible, so although 2007 was challenging for Elysha and me, it was not my doing. I was not at fault. Tiny, infantile monsters were entirely to blame, either through their direct action or their awareness of the packet prior to its dissemination, and their failure to stop it from happening or warn me when the opportunity presented itself.
In addition to all of that, some amazing things have happened as a result of putting so much of my life into writing for anyone to read.
Here are just a few:
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In the fall of 2016, I wrote a post advising Hillary Clinton to take specific strategic steps in her subsequent two debates with Donald Trump. That post reached a senior Clinton campaign staffer and was passed among other campaign staffers. I don’t know if Clinton herself read it, but I like to pretend she did, though, based on her performances in the debates, she probably didn’t.
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In June of 2010, I wrote a post about the Blackstone Valley sniper. When I was a child, a pair of men spent almost two years firing bullets into windows in my hometown of Blackstone, MA, and the adjacent towns, forcing us to turn out our lights at night and crawl under the picture window as we passed through the living room.
We lived in fear for a long time.
There was a total of eleven shootings from 1986-1987 (in addition to acts of arson and burglaries), and though no one was killed, four people were wounded in the attacks.
The two men guilty of the shootings were sentenced to prison in 1989 and were released on probation in 2008.
Five years after writing that post, the girlfriend of one of the shooters saw the post and wrote to me, complaining about my disparaging remarks about her boyfriend, who was going to be paroled and was turning his life around.
It was an interesting exchange of ideas.
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In April 2011, I wrote about my desire to become a professional best man. I declared myself ready and able to provide services if anyone needed them.
Since I wrote that post, four grooms and one bride have attempted to hire me (scheduling prevented those bookings), and a fifth groom actually hired me for his wedding but later canceled after paying a nonrefundable deposit.
I’ve also been contacted by three different reality television producers about possibly appearing on a show in which I serve as a professional best man at a series of weddings.
None of these shows came to fruition.
In 2015, comedian Kevin Hart wrote to me upon releasing his film The Wedding Ringer, in which he plays a professional best man.
He acknowledged that it was my idea first.
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In 2012, I wrote about my desire to find my first library book. I recalled a few details about the book — the color of the cover and a few plot points — but nothing specific.
Two years later, a reader correctly identified the book.
A couple of months later, another reader sent it to me. It now sits on my bookshelf.
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From May 14, 2008, to December 20, 2015, I wrote to my children (and future children) every single day on another blog.
On May 14, 2008, I realized that Elysha was pregnant – even before she knew that she was pregnant – when she left the table at a restaurant to use the restroom for the second time.
This had never happened before.
I turned to our dinner companion – who happened to be my ex-girlfriend – and said, “Elysha’s pregnant. She’s never used a restroom twice like this.”
Funny, huh? The first two people to know that Elysha was pregnant were my ex-girlfriend and me.
A day later, Elysha peed on a stick, and it was confirmed. That day, I began writing.
2,782 days later – 7 years, 7 months, and 12 days – I finally stopped writing. With everything going on in my life at the time, I decided it was finally time to quit. Though I don’t write to my children every day anymore, my blog Grin and Bear It – which I have been writing every single day since May of 2005 – still captures much of their life, as does my Homework for Life.
All of this writing to my children was done on a blog called Greetings Little One.
Since 2015, I have lived in mortal fear that something might happen to Greetings Little One. The platform, Typepad, might go out of business. I’d forget to pay my yearly fee, and they would delete the thing without warning me. Some disaster would strike, and I would lose thousands of posts to my children.
Enter Kathryn Gonnerman — storyteller, friend, and saint.
She saw my post about my fears about Greetings Little One on Grin and Bear it and took on the job of converting Greetings Little One into six enormous, beautiful, edited editions of the blog entries. They are some of the most precious items in our home, and my kids read them often.
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In 2016, I wrote about Mrs. Carroll, who taught me how to tie my shoes in kindergarten.
One day later, a reader informed me that she was 94 years old and still going strong.
By the end of that day, yet another reader had given me her home address. I sent her a letter telling her how much she meant to me and how I think about her every time I tie my shoes.
On the last day of my school year, I received a letter detailing specific memories of me from kindergarten.
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In June of 2017, I wrote about the death of a classmate, Joey Makar, and how he saved me with a simple act of kindness when I was feeling small, sad, and vulnerable.
A few days later, his widow sent me a message, telling me how much my words had meant to her in this difficult time.
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In March of 2016, I wrote about telling a story at The Moth about my former elementary school principal, Fred Hartnett, for whom a new middle school in my hometown is now named. A few days after writing about the story, Mr. Hartnett, who retired after more than 20 years, contacted me after being directed to my post, and we’ve since exchanged several emails.
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In February of 2022, I wrote about my former McDonald’s manager, Jalloul Montacer, and the important lessons he taught me while working together. After posting, several readers managed to locate Jalloul, now in Texas, and I’ve since reconnected with him.
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In October of this year, I wrote about how much Mrs. Schultz, my sixth-grade homeroom and math teacher, meant to me and how I had been unable to find her to express my gratitude.
A week later, her contact information arrived in my inbox, and we have since exchanged emails.
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Over the past 18 years, I have written about my father, whom I don’t know very well. On more than one occasion, people who knew my father when he was younger have written to me, filling in a few of the many enormous gaps I have in his life story.
Those messages have meant the world to me.
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I’ve officiated the weddings of at least three people I met via my blog.
One of the people I married had previously gone on a date and discovered that her date and I knew each other. She lived in Wisconsin, and he lived in Connecticut. They met online and eventually agreed to meet in person for the weekend.
She read my books and blog, and he followed me on social media and read my blog. I had met him two years before in the green room of a local TV studio, where we exchanged contact information.
She (and her mother) loved my work. He saw my novels in her apartment and declared his hatred for me. Their date went nowhere. I like to think it was because of me.
My blog saved her from a potentially disastrous second date.
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Clara has started reading my blog every day. This has resulted in some fantastic conversations and some eye-opening revelations about her father.
She is currently my favorite reader.
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These are just a few of the many remarkable things that have happened because I write and publish daily.
I guess it makes sense. When thousands of people read your work daily, connections will be made. You’re going to occasionally touch hearts and minds.
Sometimes, it annoys people, too.
But even that can be fun.
Thanks so much for reading every day. I’m honored and humbled by the thousands of people who read my posts here and on the social media outlets where my blog posts go daily.
But even if I had just ten readers, I’d still write daily. The rewards, audience or no audience, have made it more than worth my time.
