Each morning, I sit down with pencil in hand to ruminate upon the upcoming year in crafting resolutions. Sometimes, the things I consider come off as just another toggle of a long to-do list; it does not capture my passion. It is just a serialization of that which is helpful, whether task procurement or my skillset extension. It has all the emotional depth of pulling a socket wrench off the shelf at Home Depot.

Maybe that is life in my forties, as I'm just 4-5 years down the road from 50. Am I just relegated to weighing the value of just another minivan? What captures the passions of my heart? Or can I even have that? Am I in the space where I leave that dusty tome on the shelf so that I can loop these brooms around the room again?

Do my New Year's resolutions capture my heart for 2024 or do they they encase me in pre-formed styrofoam, just another socket wrench on the shelf?

Of course, all of this contends with the external, that which I do. And the heart, well, that is the internal. And thus, what are my motivations that project this flurry of activity in the upcoming year? To what end? Is there life beyond the checkbox?

Yes, it is the THIRD anniversary of being clad in chest hair, howling at the moon, and sinking my teeth into flesh! Well, something like that. It even feels organic, not in the marketing sense, but something that fits naturally to me.

While it is neither the 637 nor 237-day stints, in this current run, I am now past 25 days. I continue to feel jacked-up on energy which has been helpful as I've been sneaking into 2024's New Year resolutions: the last couple of days, I've been installing window blinds as they've been shipped in from Amazon for a total of 8 with another one tomorrow. I've got a few rolls of tedium to apply from window film.

While truck shopping, I kept having this thought rolling around my head: a truck does not create/make productivity; it's just a red Radio Flyer wagon; it's just a box on rollers; it just checks a box as a project req in the logistics of material acquisition for my workbench and everything that slides off it.

I lament giving away that 2016 edition workbench I built! But where was I gonna put that with the move to Memphis? And hey, this is an opportunity to build something even better, even if initially it's totally catch-22 stuff, e.g. I can really use a workbench to create a workbench.

I do find joy in laying out and planning the construction of a thing.

The great thing about having my own website down some rural road that forked off another obscure exit ramp on the information superhighway is that I can be free. There's no pretense. There's no push for Ginsu knives or the Super Bass-O-Matic '76 here. I don't write to get your feathers ruffled so that you follow MY to-do list. Perhaps that's why I dislike today's pop Internet: the lack of authenticity.

And in the quiet of the morning, if there was one technology I wish I could strip away from human consciousness, it would be the Internet. Now, regarding intranets, I'm totally on board with that—local LAN stuff—but, it's a pretty logical jump to move from a wide area network to the Internet. Now, I'd think I'd LOVE the knowledge sharing of the Internet, but there's this common denominator attribute that slides all the way down into the mud.

Maybe I'm bugged by the lack of contribution/participation that everyone flocks to because of...what? Novelty? That's what The Cool Kids do? And all I see is just another IMG tag encased by CSS code with some jazzy Javascript. How well does the thing hold up written down with an ol' #2? I daresay that takes a lot of umph outta this Video Killed the Radio Star culture. In 2003, the world was a whole lot of sizzle without steak, and it's no different now in 2023.

I gaze deep into my coffee cup to see I've drank more than half of The 34th Expedition. Yeah, there are less than twenty days before the weigh-in. This brew took awhile to kick off the percolating. There's been a lot of coffee since 2018—what a transformative year! The 11 years prior, 2006-2017, I had the desire for the outcome but there was no coffeehouse chalkboard. And then '18 came around...even today, I basically do now what I did 5 years ago; I've just made the switch to a better coffee brand.

Twenty-two+ days ago, I started at 274 lbs—I saturated to 280 about a week before that, but I spilled coffee all over myself and had to reset the counter. That said, I am confident I'm gonna hear one less kerklunk on my medical scale; I'm gonna be in my mid-240s. I haven't weighed myself—where's the fun in that? But, I've done this before. If you want to lose weight, I've got your blend: I'm your huckleberry barista.

And while I applaud the weightloss, 2024 isn't about that. Don't get me wrong: weightloss is absolutely crucial to get where I'm going, but it's unremarkable in of itself. Anybody can lose weight. No, the gains get interesting.

I have been rewarded in my return as a carnivore. Yesterday, along completing the the mundane dailies, I was empowered to...

• ...bring order to the garage (gym/workshop) after months of neglect;
• ...reset the tire pressure for the car;
• ...blow the fallen leaves off the pool cover;
• ...create the syllabus for the upcoming week and prep for the next day's classes;
• ...switch from baking a loaf to rolls with two eggs and bagel seasoning in the dough.

Lastly, there was additional webpage content work on my localhost dev site which might be revealed on a future date.

I gotta admit, I am in a 1996 mood this morning. I just finished up Yourself or Someone Like You and now I move on to Robert Miles' Dreamland. How often did this album ride next to me!