A year ago, after closing down my customer base and getting rid of most of my stuff, I moved to a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina, about an hour outside of Asheville.  It was beautiful.  The cabin was on a mountain top at ~3300', was off-grid with solar power, rain water collection and a well, and bordered a large parcel of National Forest land on two sides of the property.  Quite the setup, if you are into the simple kind of life that is.

Synchronicity played a large part in finding the place, as the timing and the price were perfect, so I was convinced that it was meant to be.  Days or weeks could go by with only my dog to talk to, and while it did provide a much needed shift of perspective (and some serious detoxing, on many levels other than just physical), after a few months it became clear that there is something to be said for at least occasional interaction with like minded people.

I went there to write, something I have wanted to do for years, and while I did get that process started, it also became clear that sometimes in order to move on to the next stage of life it might be necessary to give up being a monk on a mountain top.  There are more than a few stories of people who spend years or decades in India meditating and paying homage to deities and gurus, only to return to "civilization" and pick up very close to where they left off.

There is a coffee shop in Vancouver called 'Digital Monk', and that is what I opted to pursue instead.  It is possible to isolate oneself from the world in order to learn and grow, but it is also possible to express a little more of who we really are right where we are, even if it's someplace far from temples and ashrams and mountain tops.  In fact, if we can't be who we really are wherever we are, then what's the point anyway?