New York City
Happy New Year. Wishing you the best because it's going to be a weird year.
2012 is upon us. Tao of Pauly is creeping up to its 10th birthday. Shocker, eh? Hard to imagine that I polluted the internet with my inane internal chatter for almost a full decade.
Over the last few years, I developed a special routine at the start of the new calendar year. I essentially took off for two months -- January and February -- and cleared my freelance work schedule which gave me large chunks of unfettered time to lock myself in my office in the Slums of Beverly Hills, where I'd hone writing skills, read a pile of books (that's four-feet high), and focus on personal projects.
At the start of 2012, I have a similar game plan even though I'm in San Francisco. The plan is simple: hone, read, and write. I'm looking forward to step away from the daily grind life on the internet by drastically reducing the endless hours I waste every day on the interwebs as both a contributor and reader. The most Draconian change in my lifestyle will involve the slithery tentacles of social media -- Twitter and Facebook -- which are two massive black holes sucking up time and energy. I must step away from the chatter because it's become a all-encompassing addiction and pesky distraction.
I'm super-burned out this year on all fronts and need time to recharge my batteries. After a decade of constant web writing, I'm ambivalent about another decade of madness and I'm still searching for answers. In the meantime, I desperately need a holiday away from all things digital and must avoid the "machines" as much as possible. We, as a society, have become too reliant upon technology and this scares the bejesus outta me. I'm doing something about my fierce addiction to the virtual world and seek to ween my utter reliance upon the machines.
My holiday in NYC is almost over. It was a fun, but now it's time for me to return to California to recharge and write and write and write and write and write...
