In the waning nights of October, I wrote:

Sadly, we're all just a bunch of virtualized people, a series of Photoshopped avatars with our domain controllers instructing us about our network and our place on it. I long to move away from a life planned with and by a computer to one with a couple sheets of graph paper with a pencil in hand.

While I affirm this to be what our culture has latched onto (and I suspect I sit in an exclusive audience of stern eyebrows for the Internet), for all the speed of and discovery therein regarding idiocy that is occurring today, at the end of the day, the Internet is a tool chest. Accordingly, it should be applied to our lives like a collection of tools. Unfortunately, there are a bunch of idiots in the shop, whomping a ratchet over their heads! To each their own, but never force me to applaud the action of that community of ratchet head whompers (as if this community could be a thing).

I say all of that to justify my use of powered tools (computers) in conjunction with my hand tools (e.g. pencil and graph paper) to support my ongoing projects including a "new" one:

Today, I (finally) kick off successfully The 28th Expedition. The six-week weigh-in is on December 26th. It will feature my carnivore return, a revitalized fitness regimen, a clean-up and rebuild of this Jekyll site and a future home for my Facebook return.

I haven't been a carnivore since August 22, 2022, when a winching knee pain kept me up the night prior, one in which to this day, I remain weakened. I have absolutely piled on the pounds during these past 12 weeks. Long gone is the silly weight gain threat of heavy whipping cream. No, it has been the large-and-in-charge return of the Deathly Hallowed Sugars.

At the outset of this renewed journey is the actualization of my current weight: 295 ½ lbs and my demand for change. The weight gain is remarkable; I still expect to see in the mirror my leaner figure from this time a year ago, when I weighed 182 lb on November 4 of '21. The thing is, I'm not worried about not losing weight or even further gaining weight. I know how to win through of a zero-carb approach And I know how long it takes from this point: 12 Expeditions—but you better believe it that I'm going to beat my personal records! It's advice I've given others and now I'm that Man in the Mirror.

As it comes to weightloss itself, workouts don't contribute to weightloss. It's more of a...remodeling process that involves gaining a more effective weight while serving as a reminder of the overarching goal. So much of the weightloss process is just the zeal for staying on track. A fitness regimen keeps things on task while producing an endorphin byproduct of funzies! It's all about focus with meditation, visualization—all of that. It's why I have success in running a website while losing weight: I spend time thinking about what works and what doesn't. And while a Facebook return isn't a pinnacle objective for me, it would be fun to reconnect again to the people along the way.

And while FB doesn't serve as a visualization goal of the future, we do need one as a catalyst to break from one system and enter another approach. Losing weight just to lose weight is...anticlimactic at best. For example: my squeezing into those 33-inch Levi's in 2021 that I bought back in Christmas 2011 was a "now what?" moment, a championship trophy. It wasn't a horizon, but an endpoint. It's critical to understand that dropping weight is just correlated to our daily life and NOT a special one-time approach, powered by the will. It's why I return to carnivore. I want to live the ribeye life.

...and now I slide on my Quest 2, both metaphorically and literally as I start a VR session of Beat Saber's Blinding Lights.

I set my domain name to not auto-renew and cast this site aside. I thought I was done with writing these words, words that began even before this blog’s 2002 release, a myriad of words lost by technical catastrophes. I felt I was done speaking.

And yet, I find a special place for this leather journal upon a worn bureau in the candlelit study of my mind.

I pick up its inked pages, wince at some of the writing and wane wistfully from others. These are what remains of all the words I have written.

Yes, this is my place in the woods of the Internet. May it never resemble the focus of the heavy traffic thoroughfares. May it forever be a place of solace out in the country.

There's a certain element of not wanting to write, not wanting to spend time alone at the desk to recognize how I could have done things better and meet the challenges required in addressing future setbacks, the system required and so forth. How easy it is to shove it off to the next day!

Tomorrow's sunrise will be a new day; I will be who I want to be. And in my time, will show this to be true. I will be the carnivore who has replaced his morning cup of joe with a cup of Joe the Cow. I will live the cauldron life.

I look at what the world champions...you can count me out on THAT—I don't want any part of it! In like fashion, I don't want my phone buzzing me about this or that. If I get a call from a friend, I'd gladly answer it—who does that anymore?

Sadly, we're all just a bunch of virtualized people, a series of Photoshopped avatars with our domain controllers instructing us about our network and our place on it. I long to move away from a life planned with and by a computer to one with a couple sheets of graph paper with a pencil in hand.

Do you ever regret not staying on a path? Perhaps you find yourself in a season of a consistent inconsistency. That's common to all of us, isn't it? I have not been me...or at least the "me" that I have visualized myself to become.

See, while in July my intentions were to blaze down the weight scale (not unlike my approach that was kicked off back in 2018, fired up into 2019 and exploded in 2020 through 2021 and 2022), I ignited not a firestorm combating the effects of a carnivore's heavy whipping cream habit, but an implosion! In context to the time, thought, resources and passion poured into its success, this endeavor is the 3rd or 4th largest catastrophe of my life. What happened?

I shake my head as I recall all of those 3-something AM mornings I sweated in my gym, all of the hours devoted to meditation in seeing Future Me, and all of the books read to find the perfect diet and the calculations thereof.

I found success; I know how to win. See, most folks keep doing things, but never reach a place they want to go. I did! I took a clean aim and fired—I created the system and got there...mostly. I didn't achieve that 163 lb target from 1995-1996 (it remains the number to beat), butI did lose 149 lbs by November 2021—I was 182 lbs! I ran through those autumn corridors at Overton Park feeling so ALIVE!

And yet, I FAILED: today, I kick off the 28th Expedition in September 2022 at a chunky callback to an earlier, bloated 274 lbs.

There are reasons I might point to for this failure. As I enter the 5th week of a swollen knee from some undefined injury, I suppose I could lay blame completely on it—makes sense. Who can argue that in seeking comfort from the initial, unbridled, intense pain, I snapped both my carnivore and diet streaks at 637 and 795 days respectively? Yes, I CRASHED into a mountain of carbs. It's so easy to point at an external event and say, "It's YOUR fault!"

And while it might explain the technical details as to how I had my most recent wild uptick on the scale, it fails to answer the ever-so-important why question. And while heavy whipping cream fills the rest of the gaps, it, too, fails to answer why.

I can tell you exactly how this fitness breakdown occurred: I failed to maintain the system. Perhaps, I eased up on the throttle because I was under 20 lbs of reaching my decades-long goal—I do not know of its specific catalyst. Or, it might have occurred from simple inattention.

While it is incredulous for me to see my weight on the scale, instead of shaking my head in disgust, it's a helluva opportunity. It's time to implement the system to win.

The System

This is specifically how I win. This is the way that simply works for MASSIVE weight loss:

#1 The Beef Carnivore With a Thermos of Iced Butter Coffee. Eat all the beef with a 1:1 ratio of coffee to butter tbsp—iced please! Review Kelly Hogan's My Zero Carb Life YT channel.

#2 Continual Development and Testing of the Fitness Regimen. Always seek to improve these three parameters: the mental game, diet and workouts applied to attain specific goals.

#3 Daily Updates of the Fitness Website. Don't live an Instagram life and lose: show your losses and WIN! Running a website is a cheap way to make a public commitment to the system; in 2021, I spent all of $22.22 on my website hosting with NearlyFreeSpeech. The site should provide tables and charts that give specific details as to the status of related metrics. Use a website as a medium to showcase the style of the system. The site is a virtual representation of the inward reality.

#4 Establish and Support Daily Habits. In 2020, I was awashed with zeal to complete my daily habits that contributed to my endgame through my use of Habitica. Through an effectual application of Habitica's tools, I developed, tested and maintained the system.

#5 Early Mornings and Early Nights. It's all about opportunity and scope. There's nothing quite like cutting an evening short that will nip any climb up Carb Mountain, while opening up the early hours of the morning for gains we want.

#6 Remember the Lesson of 2020: Ignore the Zombie Apocalypses and Dystopian Governments. Tim McGraw sang it: Don't Mention Memphis. In this Internet age, we spend entirely too much time responding to things that have nothing to do with our sphere of influence. It tears us down.