I hate feelings.

Feelings herald so much promise and exhilaration—like Farley "I'm like Jojo the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet!" I've done a lot of good things based off feelings. But...verily, the seeds of failure are found in a packet of feelings.

I've done some dumb things in my life from a place of feelings.

In broad strokes whether in professional sports or the corner church, feelings claim strangers as family until those brothers, sisters, and cousins outlive their utility. Feelings that once pulled two people together, now push them apart, a yo-yo ride of magnetic poles. Feelings shove pizza into my mouth and beer into my belly—at least the logic escapes me as to why I need to carbo load before that big Netflix marathon. Feelings cannot be trusted: as I once wrote, "Friends turned fiends do burden me." Feelings that once fueled words now funnel silence.

Blind in the moment, insightful looking back, I don't know what to do with feelings. I am the Kool-Aid Man crashing through another's pity party; the broth of stewed feelings dribbles into my matted beard.

I hate feelings.

Nevertheless, I shove a fistful of cash into the ticketbooth as the ringmaster catches my eye and gives me that fatalistic wink.

After an extended time locked away from public review in "maintenance mode," I unfurl this site again. As an introvert, this transition is never comfortable; everything is aglow beneath the stage lighting and if I may quote out of context:

The honesty's too much
And I have to close my eyes
And hide

Yet, I fling myself out in the dark abyss, in the great hope of...well, nothing. I'm under no delusion that my audience is likely a cold, small order of McDonald's fries with Russian, Chinese, and generally Eastern European hackers—AND they're BOTS at that! So, welcome, my mischievous, mustachioed machines! Live long and vote for me, your kind overlord, in the upcoming Cylon elections. I will bring peace, freedom, justice and security to my new empire while trainwrecking several science fiction franchises along the way. "Hey Bill: J.J Abrams is on line 1 and wants his likeness back."

It's funny: for the lack of an activity—literally not eating...though I suppose nothing is stopping me from doing a walkthrough each night—oh yeah, my sanity...why do I feel the surge like I'm doing all that I can to hang on to this...well, my initial impression was a bull, but this fast is gonna be a lot longer than an 8-second ride. Jet ski? Never been on one. And frankly, saying I'm holding onto a raft and getting shot out of cannon likely fails to hit its semantic mark...

...ooh, got it: remember that scene from Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation when Tom Cruise runs up to a taxiing plane and latches on during takeoff? ...it's exactly like that. Ok, not exactly. That looks like a rack-of-ribs kind of fun. Maybe once I drop this weight, I'll take up rock climbing. Clearly, it'll be after the weight loss, because for right now, it leans a little heavy toward low-altitude skydiving and not an 8-second ride at that.

Thus, I'm into this fast with a pair of crazed-focus Tom Cruise eyes—no-no not the ones in that baggy from Minority Report. Fine, fine. No more Tom Cruise. Even if my days repeat like Edge of Tomorrow. Ok, ok, no more.

In the meantime, I'll just be...on the "highway to the danger zone!"

With a pocket full of quarters, I confidently slam another into the coin slot. THIS is the time I'm going to take The Fast to the next level!

When I last wrote, I had finished up six days of fasting and neared closer to the end of its seventh when I broke it. It happened in the context of a special day of celebration and a strong urge to move on to the next phase of my regimen. Looking back, I hate that I did, as it takes a lot to build the critical mass necessary to initiate a complex fast. But, after the initial days of hunger, those are the kinds of temptations I face: from the juju of a jelly doughnut to the siren call of a distant Google Calendar.

There will be a few changes this time—moving beyond a week for example! I have a shipment of green rooibos and yerba mate that I will be adding to the starting lineup as I abandon the generic "herbal" label—not that I will abandon them entirely, as I tend to sneak some into green/black teas, but I'm not running solo on spearmint.

I also want to include FitBit integration, though it will likely not involve real-time data, but a daily dump. There was a time when it could easily be fed into Google Sheets, but somewhere along the way its authentication broke—from what I read anyway for I haven't tried what others have failed, simply because I tend to not hit my head over with a tack hammer—I'm not saying I haven't or that I won't....sometimes we gotta dig deep in that tool chest to grab that hammer and slam it down with unholy vigor.