Okay. If you know me, you know I have…many…blogs. Breaking Ferriss, dedicated to my business/lifestyle schemes writ-large. The Smart Getaways family, my travel workshop. My commerce sites. Uggh do you Really Need Another Blog?

Well, it just-so-happens I like to write about what interests me. Actually, it’s one of my favorite things on Earth. Better than watching TV, in most cases. I blog to unwind. And the other thing I like to do is…teach. Or, more precisely, to experiment and share the results. Here are a few experiments I’ve done – and written about – in the last year.

• Try to implement the strategies in Four Hour Work Week in real life. (That’s a silly book.)

• Try to travel to Taiwan without on a shoestring, and without using Mandarin. (Even though I speak it, to a degree. I was interested in how accessible it is to first-time visitors.)

• Try to speak Mandarin well enough in a year to travel to Taiwan/China and negotiate any situation without a translator, without paying for Rosetta Stone or an expensive adult-education language class.

• Try to start a business with no investment and no risk. (A lot of people are trying this lately.)

• Try to negotiate a remote work agreement and get paid a salary to work three days-a-week (sometimes less), all above-board. (Which is why I’m able to blog about it;)

None-of-which answers the question: why an additional blog?

Well, I noticed a growing category of miscellaneous items I wanted to write about, related to surviving/thriving in NYC, that weren’t really germane to the other blogs, but which I thought readers would find useful, and which I wanted to write about, for fun. Here are some of the topics that occurred to me-

• How to keep straphanging from ruining your life.

• How to escape – or get on the right side of –  the “rent” racket.

• How things like intermittent fasting and polyphasic sleep can help you stay literally lean and mean and avoid stress in a dynamic city environment, why/how/where to exercise, and why/how/where to eat and drink.

• How to employ some of the strategies I did – and I’ll be the first to admit which parts of my situation are luck and longevity/patience – to figure out the life you want to live, and work backward to get there, including things like what happens when you start to value your time at at least $50/hour, how to make more and spend less, how to “change the frame” at work and view career climbing as only one of several means to increase your standard-of-living, etc.

• How to use things like AirBNB to be in the city at quite literally only the times you choose, rather than feel trapped.

The above are all topics that were of interest to me, but I didn’t feel any of my existing blogs had exactly the right audience. The readers of Breaking Ferriss will likely find this of greatest interest, but it’s not exactly the same. Someone who finds Breaking Ferriss likely has a non-location-specific interest in passive income and lifestyle hacking, and a potential reader of NYC Hacks is likely interested in NYC-in-particular, whether or not it involves some of the detailed shop-talk I get into on Breaking Ferriss (SEO, conversion rates, etc.). For the exact same reason Tim Ferriss didn’t write The Four Hour Body/Workweek/Chef as a single book, I regard this blog as the logical sequel to Breaking Ferriss.

Every “experiment” blog I write serves a selfish purpose as well. Knowing I’ll need to write about it pushes me to do and try things I wouldn’t otherwise. Talking to Far East One clerks in Taipei in English in Taipei. Making videos in Mandarin for Taiwanese drum students. Bootstrapping a business with minimal investment instead of just pulling out the credit card. As such I’m looking forward to experimenting with some of the things above so I can write about them.

The tagline for this blog says “how to live like a West Coaster”, and – at the risk of stereotyping – I’d like to explain what that means. I’m not talking about lumping everyone Californian/Orgeonian/Washingtonian into a single category. But as a Rocky Mountain kid who paid frequent visits to the west coast (and who still does as a New Yorker), who now has family in at least two west-coast cities, I’ve been sensitive to the differences in outlook between NYC and the west coast. I don’t think I’m committing any great sins-of-generalization to say a great many San Franciscans and Bay Area folks begin with lifestyle-in-mind and design their careers around their need to be outdoors, drink wine, etc. (Yes, many are reaping the benefits both of luck and of years of hard work.) To avoid going down a stereotype rabbit hole, let’s operationally define a “west coast approach” in a few ways. Whether-or-not they describe every west-coaster to-a-T is irrelevant to the purposes of this blog.

Favoring abundance over scarcity. This means assuming there are enough opportunities that it’s not necessary to be desperate for any one. This has implications in everything from driving to job offers.

Resisting the temptation to define ourselves by our paycheck. A paycheck is a means-to-an-end. Nothing more. I can’t tell you how many poor decisions – poor financial decisions, ironically enough – I’ve made over the years because of ego, instead of practicality.

Seeing ourselves – not a place or circumstance – as the architects of our lives. Does circumstance intervene? Sure it does. Does one have to be the beneficiary of a certain amount of luck and a certain number of opportunities to even be in a position to see herself as the architect of her own destiny? You bet. But probably not to as great-a-degree as most of us think.

Appreciating the outdoors, good food, and good drink.

Etc etc. Yes, there are rat-racing Silicon Valley-ites. Yes, there are Seattle-ians (?) who will fight you for a parking space. (Although – find me one.) But I think the stereotype holds in broad-strokes. Whether it does or not, that’s how I’m going to approach living in the hustling, scarcity-centered, overly-money-conscious hub that is NYC.

And here’s an early secret – those traits I just listed about NYC? Make it easier for you, because they’re all fighting tooth-and-nail for the wrong things.

Will expand further in future posts. Going to be fun. For me at least;)