Delusiastic!: The Origin Story

Brad in front of a mirror reflecting the street art
across the street and me taking the photo

It all started at the Buck Institute. As they had dozens of times before, Brad and Bob were sitting in a conference room with some visiting scientists. The meeting started, as meetings so often do, with everyone taking a turn at introducing themselves and telling the group—blah, blah, blah—a little about themselves. 

After listening to Bob go through his usual introduction, it was Brad's turn. However, instead of launching into the usual script—for reasons he can’t quite remember—Brad turned to Bob and then to the group and said, “Hi, I’m Brad Gibson, and I share the delusional enthusiasm of my colleague to my right." 

To which Bob interjected, "You mean delusiasm?" 

"Yes, that's it." Brad said, at which point their colleagues looked at them both strangely, not quite sure of what to make of this. 

That night Brad laughingly told me the story of this new word he and Bob had come up with. I was so enthusiastic about it that you might even say I was delusiastic. I said, "We absolutely must do something with this! Like maybe we could have a blog called "Delusiastic" where we could just do anything we wanted! 

"That's a great idea!" Brad replied, delusiastically. "Let's do it!" 

So after dinner, I ran upstairs and quickly threw together a very rough draft of the new blog called Delusiastic. But after that, we completely ran out of steam and never actually managed to post anything on the blog (see Why?). 

When I came back to this blog a few weeks ago in a new fit of delusiasm—I had decided a needed a place where I could post the new writing I was working on as well as some of my older pieces and maybe even the work of other people I admire—I saw that it had been eight whole years since I created the blog and that I done absolutely nothing with it in the interim. I had to laugh because, well, what a perfect example of delusiasm in action. 

Brad says that this time around he's definitely going to contribute. I'm not holding my breath.

by Nina Zolotow

• Subscribe to Delusiastic! here • Follow Delusiastic! on Facebook and Nina on Instagram •