Just a quick note to let you know I’m doing some major back-end work here at Solitary Zen. I’ve installed a new WordPress framework and I’m trying to get the design worked out. I thank you in advance for your patience.

I’ve been only mildly surprised by the fact I’ve been slow to muster much energy to get back to blogging and social networking. Beyond a cursory “I’m back!” post and a scattered tweet or two, I’ve just not found the energy or inclination to resume “regularly scheduled programming.” I suspect this may hold true through the remaining three (plus) weeks of summer. Don’t take it personally, folks. I’m just trying to get a few things sorted and/or situated before I feel it appropriate to divert any appreciable amount of attention to my online endeavors.

In an effort to recalibrate several aspects of my personal, creative and professional life, I have decided to take a “digital sabbatical” starting at 12:01AM Saturday July 24, 2010 and running through 12:01AM Monday August 23, 2010.

During this time, I will not be updating Twitter, Facebook, my blog or the Solitary Zen site. E-mail will be checked and answered very sparingly – so sparingly that I wouldn’t recommend anyone count on it as a way of reaching me. My cell will remain on during this period. Calls and texts are welcomed. If you have my digits, use them.

In those 28+ days I will be researching and note-taking for my writing projects, doing a much-needed clean-up and rearrangement of the townhouse, as well as getting my creative space/office put back together. I will be playing, writing and recording music. I will be reading, meditating and trying to see into the future – but not too far ahead. I will be cooking. I will be walking and hiking. I will be taking pictures. I will be working.

See you on the other side!

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still; but if I think I am going to achieve stillness at some future date, I have destroyed the possibility of stillness. It is now or never.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

- Blaise Pascal

Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human brain with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human heart with compassion.

– His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you.”

– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Finally got ’round to doing a proper “reboot” of the Solitary Zen site. Please check back soon for updated content!