Tao of Pauly

Lost on a Monday

I am giving myself 15 minutes to write this post. I have no time today. I expect my thoughts to be frazzled and all over the place. But I'm in a rush and only have 14 more minutes to write something for this blog.

Yesterday, I had an unexpected family emergency. And that took up most of my Sunday night. The hard part is that I don't know what's up so I'm stuck in limbo. I'm kinda lost because today is supposed to be the Monday before a big trip. Those days are always hectic and crazy for me. I was supposed to hit the road for a month and I have a ton of shit to do before I depart. That includes heading to the post office, paying bills, doing Christmas shopping, packing, laundry, work, watching the Knicks/Rangers/Jets with Derek, and putting in some qaulity time with everyone's favorite malcontent elevator button heiress, and other random shit.

Right now, all of that is on hold while I wait...

My original plans were to leaving this Wednesday and flying from NYC to Las Vegas via JetBlue the offical airline of the Tao of Pauly. On Friday, Grubby and I would be taking a side trip... a road trip... from Vegas to LA. Should be fun and epic and I expect to play cards with some friends from LA. This roadtrip has been on our agenda for almost a year. While I'm in Vegas, I'll have a week of work covering a poker tournament at the Bellagio and participating in a blogger get together. I want to spend my last week in Las Vegas playing cards and padding my poker bankroll while writing about some Las Vegas stuff. I'll be back in NYC on Christmas Eve.

And now, I'm afraid I might have to wait a few days to fly to Vegas, which means that the LA trip is possibly out.

These past few days are always hectic with the Turkey Day holidays. I usually slip into a seasonal depression right around mid-November and it lasts until late February. Part of that is the weather and most of it is the holidays. In order to combat my lingering seasonal depression, I started scheduling trips in December and January, to help break up the cold winters in NYC. It's not a coincidence that I picked Nevada and Florida as two places for to travel in the Winter. Derek and I have been heading to Las Vegas the last few Decembers to gamble on pro football. Last year, our trip ended up being the center point for the first ever poker bloggers meet up. The last two years I have spent time in Miami with Jerry. I headed down to see Phish for their New Year's shows in 2003. And last year I spent some time relaxing and playing cards.

This year, I intended on spending most of December away. I'm trying to secure a freelance gig to cover a poker tournament in the Bahamas. And if that doesn't happen, I've been kicking around the idea of a trip to Costa Rica, Belize, or South America. Yeah, traveling has always been a viable cure for my dour moods. Since May, it seems that I've been living out of my suitcase.

I've been trying to work on the Vegas book and I'm struggling with it. My probelm is dedicating large chunks of time to make a dent into it. I told myself that the first three weeks of January will be devoted to traveling and working on the book. On a positive note, I have been blazing through my writing assignments/freelance work/personal projects. I made a list of 15-20 things I need to write ASAP, I'm churning them out and since I'm in a good head space, the quality of writing is some of my best.

But now, I have this personal situation to deal with and it's distracting me. I can write but only in short spurts.

Anyway, I have a few more minutes left. Here's what I did this past week... I watched a lot of random movies with Derek and Briana. She's getting back into the Netflix flow and Derek had TiVo'd a ton of shit for me over the past few months when I was traveling. I had to watch a bunch of episodes of The OC and random poker programs so he could erase them. I was using up all the memory on his TiVo! Plus he needs the space to record a bunch of stuff for me over the next month.

I just picked up a new book called Blink. Wil suggested that I read it and it's fascinating. It's my bathroomb ook so I've only read a few pages. I want to finish it by the end of the week. Because I have such a crazy work schedule, one of the hardest things to cope with for me is having to lose valuable reading time. I used to read two or three books a week! That was way before I started blogging and reading blogs.

I got into an argument with someone the other day. They argued that blogging was writing. I told them it's not. Blogging is blogging. Writing is another beast. Some of the best writers I know are horrible bloggers and some of the best bloggers I know are horrible writers. So you figure that one out.

And yes, I think I made three or four different women cry over the past few days. I'm such an asshole. I should be shot. Speaking of getting shot, thank God I smoothed things over with Jaxia. I erased her email that included two of her poems for Truckin'. I couldn't find them and in a rush to make a deadline (which was one week late) I published the issue without asking her to resend her poems. Anyway, it's all cleared up. I apologized. She's not going to shoot me for now. She's from Texas where even the women are heavily armed. She's a good shot too she insists, so that made me worry even more. Like the saying goes... a well-armed populous is the best defense against tyranny.

Recent Writing Music Included...
1. Charlie Hunter
2. Vida Blue
3. Bob Marley
4. Wes Montgomery
5. My Morning Jacket