Well, maybe not right away but it's looking like a good plan. I recently saw a show about the weather station at Eureka, Nunavut. Aside from all the great opportunities to wear my parka, I started to think about how six months up north might be a healthy option. Imagine six months without reliable TV or internet. Forget eBay or Amazon. You could order stuff but it wouldn't get shipped to you until it was time to go home and it would cost a fortune. There would be no distractions like Starbucks, films, family, friends and holiday commitments.

Basically, a person would do their job and then your free time would be...well...free. There's a gym up there, so you could work out a couple of times a day. No restaurants and certainly no take-away so all that work in the gym might actually pay off. After that your evenings could be dedicated to writing, learning a language and maybe teaching yourself some new software. Whatever is on your to do list, you could have all the time in the world to accomplish it.

I was sharing this brilliant epiphany with a friend and as it turns out this concept is neither new nor brilliant (on my part, at least). There's a northern artists scholarship program that exactly is for the purpose of letting artists work without distraction.

Well, still a good idea, even if it's not mine. I imagine that six months away in the north, if handled properly, would be very peaceful and relaxing. That kind of isolation would go a long way to resetting a broken mind.

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