I’ve been doing this for five years? Really? Damn…..

Five years ago, more or less – not surprisingly, I’m running a few days behind on getting this post together – in a moment sparked almost equally by inspiration and boredom, I created a Blogspot account, typed up my musings on David Wondrich’s then-latest book (Killer Cocktails, at the time), and posted it online to be read by … well, mainly just me.

Now, having just reached the fifth anniversary of what became The Cocktail Chronicles, I have a mixed bag of results: hundreds of posts, scores of drink recipes, a daily readership that’s ranged from one to several thousand, more media attention than I deserve, about $4.50 in advertising revenue and a full-time writing career that owes quite a bit to this blog.

Five years in, I also have a dwindling enthusiasm for spending my free time doing much the same thing I do in my work life, almost no patience for the pubic lice of the Internet who seem to visit blogs looking only for items that will incense them into posting hateful comments, a fatigue with the incessant barrage of press releases pushing new types of booze that would be grossly out of place on this blog, and a lingering sense of guilt that I haven’t blogged about the countless ideas, suggestions, samples, people and experiences that I’ve come across during the half-decade I’ve been running The Cocktail Chronicles.

Five is a milestone year; if it were a child, my blog would be losing its baby teeth and asserting greater independence about now, and indeed there are times when The Cocktail Chronicles feels like a creature distinct from me, something that for a long time has been an outgrowth of my interests and my personality, but which now – due primarily to the time and effort required to keep up such an operation, coupled with my fatigue at doing the same – feels out of sync with what I’m really thinking and doing.

I’ll spare you the full extent of my bloggy navel-gazing, but suffice it to say that as this blog’s fifth anniversary approached, among the options I considered for its observation was the decision to whack it entirely. One day, it would be there, with the recipes for cutting-edge drinks I blogged about back in 2006 or 2007 that are now ubiquitous and even dated; and the next, like Paul Harrington’s belated cocktail section on Wired, The Cocktail Chronicles would be dissembled, its components scuttled into the dark depths of Internet oblivion. The idea of blogicide had a morbid allure, but ultimately – whether it’s because I still see value in the idea of maintaining the blog, or because I simply don’t know when to shut up – it’s an option I cast aside.

Anyway – enough with the Tim Burton-style necrodynamics. The Cocktail Chronicles is still here, it’s five years old (which in blog years is somewhere around 112) – whoopee! I haven’t forgotten my login password and I still drink more kickass drinks than I can reasonably expect to type up during my free time, so I’ll keep the old girl running for a while longer yet just to see where it may take us all.

Thanks for coming along these past five years, or however long you’ve been visiting the site. I’m not sure I can promise five more, but I have at least a few more good rounds left in me. Cheers.