Tao of Pauly

Thanks Everyone

I'd like to thank everyone who wrote me and called me that send good wishes about what's been going down in my world. My grandmother was in a coma the last few days. She's awake now. She's not 100% but she's well enough for me to make the decision that I can travel for the next month. I hope that when I return to NYC around Christmas Eve, that she'll be doing a lot better.

Now I have to rush to finish packing so I can make my flight to Las Vegas.

The past few weeks have been bittersweet. Plenty of highs and lows. One of the highs was seeing Briana a lot sooner than I expected, heading up to Foxwoods/Rhode Island to spend time with Senor and Jodd, and Spaceman's visit to the city. The obvious lows were having to deal with family stuff this past week. That's never fun especially since all of them are virtual strangers to me. Plus this past week I lost over $1K playing poker. That seems insignificant in the bigger picture. But still, I look at $1K and think... that's a flight to Thailand. Plus the hardest part was dealing with losing yet another book deal. I contributed a few pages to a poker book that was supposed to get published next year. The publishing company yanked it. I'm o for 2 this past month in book deals.

I've worked incredibly hard this year. I've always knew I was a good writer and I finally got some recognition. The amount of work I put into my writing might be equivalent to my output on Wall Street. And I used to work 70-80 hours a week then. I'm really looking forward to ending the year on a positive note. I'm still going to work hard and play hard in December, but when 2005 is over, I'm going to have to sit down and re-think everything I do. Shit, Ive already begun to make changes in my head. In 2006, I hope I can carry them out. I'm gonna travel more and write more for myself. That's something that will have to come first instead of trying to squeeze that into my hectic work schedule.

A friend gave me some advice recently and said, "You can always tell people 'No thanks.'"

I'm going to be using that phrase a lot next year.

Next stop... Las Vegas.