A lot has changed in the online world since I got my first email address in 1995. A lot has changed in my own expectations of a creative and successful career. My day job is working as a Project Manager for Pearson Assessment. My main job is being a dad to two little boys, and wooing my wife. All of my creative projects are thus relegated to “side” projects, pretty much all of them online at this point. The metrics for what makes a successful project (or even a good day spent online) are somewhat subjective and personal to me. I don’t go by pageviews or hits (unless they were all astronomical numbers & I had ads – then I would care!), so here are a few things that make me happy online:

– when one of my Metafilter comments or posts gets 100+ favorites

– when Emily Gould “likes” one of my posts on Tumblr

-when one of my Tumblr posts ends up on the Tumblr radar or Staff Blog

– when Hari Kunzru retweeted one of my tweets (though he doesn’t have as many followers as @sarahw or @goldman or @noradio who have also retweeted me). I’ve also had twitter interactions with people I admire like Craig Newmark, Anil Dash, and Rogers Cadenhead.

– any time my name appears on kottke.org

-a pic I post on mlkshk gets 1000+ views or 100+ likes

Maybe this is gauche to admit, maybe it’s not cool to admit you like “favorites” or stars or karma or whatever, but I don’t care. This is me.