Rfslogo New

The Twelve City Project

Karl Palachuk

Karl W. Palachuk
April 5, 2017

I had a strange idea a few years ago. And slowly, I realize it is coming true.

It happened when I was traveling a lot and figuring out ways to be just as productive on the road. When I’m in the U.S., this is generally not a problem. Most decent hotels have decent Internet and decent workstations in the room.

Overseas, I tend to use FlipKey to find places to stay for 4-7 days at a time. In those places, I had to make absolutely sure that the Internet was good – and I needed the right electrical adapters for my equipment. So it took a little work.

In the end, I developed routines to be productive and connected in England, Europe, and Australia. My experience is that South America was much easier because my cell phone just works and the electrical outlets are the same as the U.S.

That’s when the idea started to form. I have created a life in which I combine traveling, writing, and speaking. So I found myself in Australia for twenty-two days. I topped off the trip with a week on a beach in New Zealand. Great Internet, great electricity, great cell service. And since my business is totally based on cloud services, I had perfect communication with everyone all the time. The time zone was a challenge, but only a minor one.

If I can travel for a month and plop down on a beach for a week at a time . . . Why not find twelve places where I can relax and “live there” for a month? The Twelve City Project was born. Even when the idea was fresh, I was pretty sure that the first place (not really a city) would be one of the beaches near Brisbane, Australia. I love Brisbane. And the beaches going both north and south are undeniably some of the best beaches in the world.

City One: Brisbane (or Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast)

Another obvious city is Sacramento, CA. Why? Well, I’ve lived here for more than 30 years and traveled hundreds of thousands of miles all over the world – and I keep coming home to Sacramento. It’s a great location for pretty much anything you want to do. San Francisco and Napa are a quick drive away. So are Lake Tahoe, the foothills, Yosemite, and just about anything else you want to do. Plus the weather is almost always better in Sacramento than anywhere else I go on any given day.

City Two: Sacramento, CA

After that, I started thinking about my favorite places to visit. Some (e.g., New York City and London) are more “one week” cities than one month cities. I am pretty much done with these places after a week. That really makes them more vacation spots than “dig in and work” locations.

To be honest, weather plays a major role in my decision making. It will be fun to visit Scotland later this year, but I would not want to live in a place that’s so cold all the time. I imagine I will love it – for a week, not a month.

I have several candidate locations where I have stayed for a week and truly enjoyed myself, relaxed, and got some great writing done. Nomination for additional cities include:

– South Lake Tahoe in the Summer

– Del Mar (north of San Diego)

– Fort Lauderdale, FL

– Clearwater, FL

– Somewhere in Hawaii

Are you noticing a theme here? Lots of warm beaches. I am certainly open to other cool, fun places to hang out. Part of the experience is the local culture as well as the scenery. I really want to “live there” for a month. So I want a local bar and a place to go meditate. Beaches are good because I love meditating on a beach as the sun comes up and then going for a swim in the ocean.

If I can do all that and then take a shower and start my day by 8:00 AM, why not do it in a fun location?

Next Step: More Exploration

In talking to a few people about this, it’s clear that I need to visit Asia and I need to explore beach cities in Spain and Portugal. I need more non-U.S. cities. I found South America to be extremely inviting and friendly. And I certainly need to spend more time in the Caribbean.

Will I get there? Will I actually unplug from my tethered existence and live in twelve different places? Maybe! Along with the other great places I’m visiting this year, I’m going to spend 25 days in Australia – half of that on one beach. So Brisbane (are) and Sacramento really are the first two cities.

If nothing else, it’s a grand adventure!

Have you had similar thoughts or dream? If so, please feel free to share.

🙂

Share this post

2 Responses

  1. Karl,

    A former boss and friend on Facebook liked a post of you proclaiming your love for scents. Awesome!

    I love your perspective for taking control of your life.

    For the past five years I have been sitting on an idea for a website and feeling I need to take action but also feeling stuck as to how exactly to move forward.

    Hoping by following you I might be able to glean some insight from you in achieving success and making my dreams a reality.

    Regards,

    Richard Bowser
    Spanish Fork, Utah

  2. As you know, I am on at least a similar journey, but for me it is more of a four countries plan, with one being the USA. And as you know, I have a large family (four Siberians, two Bengals) to juggle as well as a fine wife to help me juggle. But in a sense, because I also run an IT business and do traveling photography, I’ve got even more balls in the air, or perhaps just bigger balls. Yes, let’s go with that.

    So the real challenge for me and no doubt, some of your other readers, is to find a way to let the legacy business go (in my case IT) and turn the second business, built on travel, into the real money maker. That is something that may or may not be possible in the short term, but remains my goal. Just sharing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Keep Reading . . .