There’s no internet in Europe! People here still drive around exclusively in horse carriages. And they speak Latin! I had to send this post by snail mail to India, where my not-so virtual assistant transcribed and posted it to my blog!
I took a vow of silence! It’s a spiritual thing. I can talk and laugh and meet nice people, but I absolutely cannot blog. Apparently, this will buy me direct access to paradise.
My dogs ate my laptop! These cute little bastards. My large list of post ideas: Gone. All my drafts: Gone. My already edited, finished, and polished posts: Gone. All that was left were some aluminium crumbles, and a couple of letters from my keyboard.
Meh.
None of these excuses work. I always was a bad liar. So here’s the truth:
I wrote “the book.”
It took longer than I thought. (Actually, as we speak, it’s “still taking.”)
In the end, “the book” needed a couple of months for gestation. It took shape after reading the answers from last year’s reader survey – and I think it was worth the effort. Hope you will like it a lot.
“The book” even has a name and a release date now, and I’m glad to announce it here today:
It’s called Beyond Rules, and it will be published on Tuesday, March 15th.
The more I experimented and the longer I wrote this blog, the more I noticed that the problem with rules is not just one of submitting to questionable authorities. Even in the context of “your life, your rules, your pace,” (see the tagline!) rules are often simply not good enough: They are restrictive rather than permissive, they are stubbornly stable rather than adapting to changing real life situations. What’s more, they take responsibility away from the people, and this is nothing I’d like to promote when it comes to living a conscious and self-determined life.
“Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware,” Arthur Koestler wrote. If we unconsciously, yet unconditionally adhere to a fixed set of rules in our lives, the same thing happens.
More on that in the book, an excerpt of which I will publish here in the upcoming days, if my next type-written letter makes it to my Indian assistant.
In other news, I just traveled to Denmark, desperately wanting to see the sea, after living in Cologne, Germany during the last couple of weeks. Here, an ice-cold wind is blowing, but the North Sea is just beautiful, and inspiring me to get the last couple of chapters of “the book” written and edited.
I will be back to Cologne for the launch, and plan to travel to Stuttgart, Hamburg, Berlin, Austria, and probably Southern France later in April and May. Let me know if you’re somewhere near and would like to meet up.
Love the book title! Am really looking forward to reading it – no pressure or anything Fabian ;)
as i consider myself being a minimalist, zenbuddhist and anarchist i’m looking forward to read “the book”. :-)
Hey, good to hear from you Fabian!
Looking forward to the book. Nice release date: the Ides of March! The day Caesar was stabbed, and also the day I started my site 2053 years later
Great news! I’m looking forward to “the book”!
And those pics are very impressive, by the way.
The dogs can’t eat laptop! LOL Well if that happened to me, I’d just start again from scratch. Cause my motto is “Everything is alright”. I don’t need to be agitated. hehe
And yeah I’d be looking forward on the book and, why the tagline “your life, your rules, your pace,” is restrictive rather than permissive? hmmm
Your absence was noticed. Your excuses are all accepted. Probably because we don’t have the Internet here in Europe, so I couldn’t read them anyway.
Now, show us the book! :)
I’m back from the beach and glad to read this post. Looking forward for “the book” here too!
Thank you, everybody! It’s coming along nicely… two more days of work, and then it should be done! :)
@Flowunity: I feel like Zen, Anarchy, and Minimalism are a great combination! Hope you’ll like the book! :)
@David: Ha, I love it that I’ll release Beyond Rules on your blog birthday! Admittedly, I wasn’t aware of the Ides of March – but it seems like a good fit!
@Faustus: Danke Dir! Die Fotos gab es teilweise auch schon auf der Presidencia… bin diesmal nicht dazu gekommen, neue zu machen!
@Marco: That motto is perfect, man! As for the tagline: Even if we make the rules ourselves, they can become restrictive if we aren’t conscious about them. More in Beyind Rules! :)
Glad to count myself among your readership now. Your post on love and “attention” was (to me), the best in the #lovesparks roundup.
I’m going to reference your blog (if you don’t mind) in my next post.
I’m looking forward to your handbook to malleable rule-making. Very important concept, regardless of your dominant paradigm.
Thank you Mark! Glad to hear you enjoyed the post!
And of course I always appreciate a link! :)
Hi Fabian! Read your blog for the first time today (got here via nomeatathlete.com) and think it’s great. Especially since I like to think of myself as a friendly anarchist :) I live in Linz and would love to have a beer with you when you’re in Austria. I’ll keep checking to see when you’re in the hood.