Tao of Pauly

Talking Timbuktu

By Pauly
New York City

I barely slept on Monday night and was exhausted when I woke up on Tuesday. I had a meeting in midtown. I walked to the subway and read a few chapters in The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. I arrived early and wandered around Grand Central for about fifteen minutes and killed time in the newsstand. Then I headed over to my meeting.

I hired an asset management company to handle my finances. I decided that I would only managed 10% of my savings and hand over the rest to professionals. It was a decision that I had been grappling with for several months. I had to swallow a lot of pride because I used to manage money for a living. I was only doing slightly better than the market and didn't have the time to keep up with everything to be a savvy individual investor. So I sought professional guidance and outsourced my financial future to a bunch of Wall Street thugs. My money is in better hands now. And the transfer to an asset management firm has given me more free time. I used pay close attention to my positions and holdings and read hundreds of articles and reports a week. By alleviating myself from the responsibility, I'll be saving time and making more money in the process. All that extra time I can now allocate towards personal writing projects.

After the meeting, I met Senor for lunch. He was in the city because he also had a meeting in Midtown. It worked out that we could hang out, if only for an hour.

I spent the rest of the day catching up on random work and sorting through my mail. I discovered several freelance checks and a stack of catalogues. There were a couple of alumni magazines and tons of junk mail from credit card companies. Several books that I ordered arrived such as The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton, Let It Blurt by Jim DeRogatis, and a Lonely Planet's New Zealand guide book. I also have Hotel California next up on my reading list. Books are the only material items that I seem to buy these days. And when I'm done, I'm always trying to give them away to friends.

I crashed around 3am and woke up just after 10am on Wednesday. I slept for seven hours straight. That's a miracle because I did it without any drugs. No Vicodins. No Xanax. No Unisom. No Ambien. Nothing. I guess my body was so tired that it shut itself down. That's the most sleep I got in a very long time.

I eventually got up by 10:30 and went jogging. I ran about a mile before I stopped. It had been a while since I went running. The weather was decent, a shade under 60 degrees, and the leaves on the trees had been changing colors for several weeks. I rushed past fallen leaves of all colors with dirty yellow and light brown being the two most predominant.

I showered and started a load of laundry. I walked to the grocery store. I had not been in there in months. They started a renovation and a lot of shit was moved around. I found the cereal section and picked up Grape Nuts. I'm back on the diet which means plenty of Grape Nuts. I bumped into someone I knew and blew him off. He's the father of one of my brother's childhood friends. I had no time for small talk in the middle of the dairy section. I made a quick exit. I walked across the street to the Korean grocery store and bought a batch of bananas.

I finished up my laundry then wrote for a bit before I cranked out two articles. I have a deadline on Thursday and finished that assignment quickly. For my Monday deadline, it took me a bit longer but I finished a first draft of over 2,000 words. I put it aside to let it marinate as the phone rang. My brother was calling me. It was 5:30 and he was leaving work. Time flew by so fast. Once second it was noon and then it's 5:30pm.

We ordered dinner from the diner and I got a basil pesto chicken sandwich on foccacia bread. Good stuff. We watched the NY Rangers game and they beat the Devils in NJ. I also watched a close game between #1 rank UNC versus Davidson. The spread was 11.5 and the game was in Charlotte. UNC was behind by a few points most of the game, but pulled away in the last two minutes for the victory.

I played an online poker tournament and finished in like 40th place out of 112 players. Ever since I got back from Australia, I'm up a few bucks playing online. It's been a while since I could play everyday.

I intended on writing late at night, but I decided to listen to music instead. I stayed up for a few hours longer than I wanted, but it had been a very long time where I could sit in the dark and the mind wander as I played some of my favorite musicians, both jazz and non-jazz, including The New Mastersounds, Miles Davis, Widespread Panic, and Ali Farka Toure.