I am at a crossroads with this site, as I reconsider its role in my life. I feel as though I should de-prioritize its position as a daily memoir of sorts, as incomplete of a function as I've wielded it. It's like the paradigm of a chef: I invest my opening moments to whip up something for consumption only for my dish to be soon forgotten. I do prefer creating pages over posts due to their permanence as I'd rather be a woodworker in my content creation.

And while I like the self-motivational aspects of daily posts and their penchant to create new ideas, I'd rather establish a few, core ideas and spend my time refining those.

I tend to dabble intellectually. I've long lost the belief that I can know it all; however, I do like picking up a pinch of this and a pound of that. I'm blessed that English is the lingua franca of the world and to come to age in parallel with the Internet. Still, would I have honed a sharper blade if there wasn't this great expanse before me?

I don't need to dabble. It's funny how dabbling to me used to pair nicely with my news consumption; now that I actively ignore medias, my dabbling foundation cracks. There's gotta be a correlation to that!

Still, there's a place for those potent potables in my life—I just don't need to consume them to excess! I guess the vogue application is Pareto here—well, in so far as time's role goes...and what do I know, maybe the new team role player would possess a bountiful effect as well!

...which brings me back to this site. There are some core, structural pillars I want to promote in my life, thereby I promote them on my site, yet, there should be a little wiggle room for the malleable. Or the mandible for that matter!

(music link)

I'm considering on moving beyond this synthwave theme for my website, one in which I've built and tinkered around thereafter since 2017. I've updated it as a child theme for WordPress themes Make and GeneratePress; a standalone HTML file; and for this latest iteration using Minimal-Mistakes. While I like it (CLEARLY), I wonder if it's time to move on?

I want to change my focus...change the core of things.

Honestly, I would like to spend more on content than color...while still giving heed to legibility, of course. If I never see another needling serif font for body text, my life would not be incomplete! And honestly, if a website goes way past 544 px for its text's width, I'm thinking either it's a) the '90s again; or b) I'm on a safari across my monitor waving to Mordor as I pass!

I began listening to an album from my past that was a regular on the rotation at a coffehouse back then, the music I heard after a turbulent and transformative period of my life, some 20 years ago in this upcoming fall season. Twenty years ago this August, I failed a Business Finance class—the first F of my life and I didn't care—I didn't even show up for the final. The funny thing is that I liked the professor and still remember his market advice. But, I was at the threshold of thunder as it was the opening salvo of the storm for my soul.

And at this point I'll leave my audience to pick up tomorrow...

I'm back in The 14th Expedition! Didn't I already abandon it? Wasn't it something that no longer fit into what I'm trying to accomplish?

Hardly!

I experimented with its removal, despite The Expeditions' long-time application—that's a strength of mine, the willingness to bench a starter to see if I've got Tom Brady holding the clipboard. You don't go from vegan to gnawing on 8 oz of meat a day without it...or do you grab a degree in MIS and go back for seconds with a MA in English...or come to think, does one move from Arminianism to Calvinism. I'm sure there's a litany of other examples in my life.

So, why do I pick up where I last left The 14th Expedition? While I thought I was ready to stop tracking weigh-ins every six weeks and update macros in line with LBM, I just don't find daily weigh-ins to be beneficial.

Look at it another way: it's like happiness studies on tracking investments and what I've found to be true: if you check your securities daily (or hourly), you don't get stoked by their gains in proportion to the gut-wrenching experience of a loss. However, if you sit back and leave it unmonitored for a month or a year—let's say it's like an ETF or something and not an option—my 1 win to 1 loss is better for my mindspace as compared to the daily buildup. Sometimes, knowledge is weakness.

The way I see The 14th Expedition:

• Weigh-in: September 10.
• Return to a habitual workout.
• Encourage daily activity while being mindful of sedentary tendencies. There may be a FitBit return to encourage this behavior.
• Return to the music construct. There's nothing quite like a soundtrack that propels our protagonist and I'm liking YT Music.
• Make a greater focus on studies. Instead of my general three genre concept, I'd like to have a laser focus.

I write so much on how my life can be optimized while completely ignoring the best kind of life! And to what end? That is the ultimate question, isn't it? For everyone will die one day. And don't let the physicists fool you: we're not coded automatons running simulations. The universe no more popped out of nowhere than my morning cup of coffee with beans from some 3rd-world country, butter from Ireland, and MCT oil from...I guess some lab...just manifested itself on my table this morning approaching a perfect ratio of satisfaction in java.