Destructoid.com is officially one year old tomorrow. I also turn 29 tomorrow. Heh, yes ... I actually launched the site on my birthday because proper geeks are busy on their computers on their birthdays. My plans? I'm going to run around in a certain robot helmet like Miami's on fire and I have dry ice snugly tied around my testicles.

Everyone is invited to the party -- Studio A in Downtown Miami on March 16.
The party starts at 10pm and ends when they drag us away.

I wanted to reflect on this year a little today, but instead I've been staring at the blogging screen for over an hour now, fingers at a total halt. I don't even know what else to write. I'm so caught up in the emotion of it.  We had almost 24 million pageviews on our debut year. That's absolutely ridiculous.  I just wanted to go to E3 and that was great. To have our head editor appearing on G4, to be invited to every following industry conference, and to reach so many homes around the world -- to say that was a surprise is an understatement. These things don't happen to people outside of the gaming industry. I always say that's why we're different. We're not even supposed to exist, really.

More than anything, I just want to thank you, the reader, for honestly giving a shit and supporting Destructoid. There are millions of gaming sites on the web, and the fact that you come here to read our views means the world to me and all of the writers. While we do the writing, it really is the community that makes Destructoid special. We don't know how we bumped into all of you (have to see the how did I get here thread?) but we're thankful and lucky we did.

While I may have started the site, I certainly can't take credit at all for why people stick around. For me personally, tomorrow is a day to thank guys like Fronz, CTZ, Ron, Nick, Summa, Joseph, Colette, Topher, and the whole 20 or so contributors that do this for the love of it. It wasn't even until last week that we had real gaming ads on the site (how many wolves have to die?!!) thanks to our new friends at Hammersuit.

While the site's a combination of everyone's input, tips, and Tlack's custom ElephantBlog software, I do take full credit for coming up and building the helmet though. That's the product of a drop-out's one year public school fine art education that finally paid off. More fun cannot be had in bolted-together air conditioner ducts -- the first claim of it's type, I'm sure.

So tomorrow's a big deal to me. I've paid off debt all year to throw a big party for our unlikely collective tomorrow, and am sort of in disbelief that it's finally here. Ok, so I may have dipped a little into my credit cards but life's too short and I'll never have another chance to throw a one year party. The t-shirt sale helped out a lot, so thank you if you picked one up (BTW so sorry those are shipping late, we weren't expecting to sell hundreds of them!)  A second batch shipped out last week and a third batch went out yesterday. 

Confession: I seriously rented a 26 passenger Hummer limo. I've always seen those things whizzing down the street and wondered who's in them.  Tomorrow, it's me and my people. Wasteful? Yeah. But I get to keep that memory after the limo pulls away so it's money well splurged. I also get to blog about it :)

The thing that I guess moves me the most is that, if luck be my lady, I'm at the cusp of realizing a life long dream of mine: to play video games for a living. It actually seems to be happening not only for me, but also for the people that poured their heart and soul into this project.

While the site is new, the idea's been in the back of my mind for a really long time. See, about years ago I bought a memo pad and would transcribe codes from Gamepro and EGM into it.  That was Destructoid, 1989 in a sense. I was organizing meetings with kids from the neighborhood and writing crazy, stupid letters to Nintendo about their games and trying to get my video game club in their magazine. Never happened. Maybe I'll scan it in for you guys next week for shits and giggles. I have some good Kid Icarus codes in there, I'm sure.

As I got older, I let that dream go. I never thought I could move to Redmond and do the career gamer thing so I got into all sorts of other industries that, funny enough, ultimately and indirectly prepared me to build this site. You don't know how proud I feel when I see those comment counts climb up. Anyway, I know I'm ranting, but it's just that it's what I've always hoped it would be. It's surreal to me.

Damn, 6pm already. Reminds me of how time flies -- 1 year in a blink of an eye already. Time to go pick up Summa at the airport. And so, it begins and the computer is shutting down for the weekend.

Thank you for reading Destructoid. Wish you were here. 

Also, cocks.