I'm gonna wait a few days to do a recap post of 2005. I did Part 1 on the Tao of Poker and it was 5K words and took me two days to write.
2005 has been one wild ride. I did more traveling in 2005 than in pervious years. I returned to Europe went to Amsterdam with Briana and Spain for the first time and moved to Las Vegas. I was all over the country... Miami, LA, South Carolina, Indiana, Rhode Island, Colorado, and Philly... visitng friends.
My job as a poker tournament reporter was part of the reason I had been living out of my backpack for the last 9 months. It's been fun at times and stressful at others. Business travel is not nearly as fun as holiday travel. The hardest part was not having control over certain aspects of my life and having to eliminate a lot of things/hobbies/cool stuff that I enjoyed doing. I found myself having to focus on time management because I had so very little time to do things, I often found myself multi-tasking. I lost some of the pure enjoyment of doing special things because I had to make it happen while I did something else. Like eating a sandwich while I talked to someone on the phone and played online poker. In the past I could spread all three out into three or four hours. Not anymore. I would find myself with "just an hour" to do things and ended up cramming four or five things into my free periods. That is what I had to make sure I was going to change in 2006. My free periods were going to be just that... free.
Like at the 2005 WSOP. It took me three weeks before I realized I had to stop working on my dinner breaks. I used to just write through it and catch up. It was driving me crazy. Wil pointed out to me that I had to take that hour for myself otherwise I'd go crazy. I'm glad I did. It was some of th ebest advice I got this summer. Thanks again Wil.
I tried to take off this week. I did not write any freelance stuff. I found myself enjoying more free time to take long walks with Briana or watching basketball with Derek or play online poker with friends scattered throughout the country. But I also found myself doing "busy work things" like taking phonecalls and writing business emails. At least it took up a small percentage of my time, but I can never fully ignore the stuff I have going on.
It's also a sham that I have to make myself write on this blog for ten minutes everyday. I've lost the discpline to keep this up. It's OK. It's my way of telling you that I do care and will do my best efforts to keep the Tao of Pauly interesting and fresh. Everyday I'm adding new readers so I can't complain of the growth. I know I can do a better job as far as content and focus. I like the new format where I give myself ten minutes and just rattle things off and take the risk of putting out complete shit in a stream of conciousness way of writing. In many ways it's a healthy writing exercise. Trying to verbalize my thoughts into some sort of blog fodder. It's like watching Jerry Garcia sit down, smoke a ciggie, and then jam out on his guitar for ten minutes. I'd give up my left nut to see that one more time.
I've been trying to read a lot this week and it has not turned out very well. I only read 1 book out of 4 that I wanted to dig into. I also only read a few pages of my friend's manuscript instead of finishing it by today like I promised myself.
That's it. I have laundry waiting for me. Happy New Year. I'll be spending a mellow night for NYE... for the first time in years. In the past decade I've gone to see some sort of concert, even during the time Phish broke up.
1995 New York City - Tijuana CaravanLink of the day... 2005: The Year in Breasts
1996 Jersey City, NJ - My friend Claudia's bash
1997 New York City - Phish
1998 New York City - Phish
1999 Big Cypress, Florida - Phish
2000 San Francisco - Galactic
2001 New York City - Vida Blue (featuring Page from Phish)
2002 New York City - Phish reunion concert
2003 Miami, FL - Phish
2004 New York City - no concert - I skipped Flaming Lips & Wilco
2005 New York City.... ???
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