Jump

Last Wednesday on my fat fast, I was feeling like my ol' Superman self. Or do I line up better to the Dark Knight? Then there's Wolverine—(throws up hands in exasperation)—well, some kind of superhero!

I felt powerful that morning! Thus, for TEN hours, I bussed furniture from stop-to-stop; I Rubik's Cubed the whole place. It would be underselling it for me to say I was sore that night. But, it felt like one of those good sores.

Boy howdy did I get that one wrong!

I woke up the next morning with my left foot flaring up. In the upcoming days, I wound up on crutches—AGAIN. Yes, a moment ago I was on crutches for my right foot, and now it's my left. Wow! Not only can I work a computer mouse with both hands I am injury-ambidextrous!

*sigh*

"First-to-Worst, party of none?"

And to ease the discomfort, what did I turn to? The sugars. ALL the sugars. I gotta have a better understanding why I turn to carbs for comfort, especially as carbs have a tendency to shove me down a flight of stairs.

It's so...event-driven—the build-up, the sights and the sounds. I know better. Proteins heal. Fats fuel. Carbs are a pack of wolf kids let loose inside of a Yankee Candle.

Dreams

The other day I wrote:

Still, the past will forever mean something special to me, all the pivotal shifts, whether...

...1994's freedoms...

...2004's journeys...

...2014's new beginnings...

...2024's...

I did not fill in the blank. It's the sort of thing that is retrospective, right? Still, some of it can be targeted on the front end; else, it'll be just like one of those largely unremarkable years. I want more than that. While 2024's specifics remain shrouded, I can set forth in a direction.

Well, lemme pencil that in:

...2024's transformations

Look, would I pick up these overuse, acute injuries if I had an everyday fitness regimen? Or, do I let entropy reign and just become another one of my peers?

I look ahead to all the plans that we made
And the dreams that we had.
I'm in a world that tries to take 'em away.
Oh, but I'm taking 'em back.
...
It's not my time.
I'm not going.
There's a fear in me—
It's not showing.
This could be the end of me
And everything I know.

-3 Doors Down, It's Not My Time (2008)

Right Now

I am convinced of this: at 46, I will be in the best shape of my life. We're talking about rolling out of bed to pump out the pushups, practicing taijiquan, and signing up for 5Ks kind of shape! I have my designs set on being a lean bodybuilder, a martial artist, and a runner. And yes, I recognize that I envision this while I can't even take a single step forward while just twenty lbs from that last ker-klunk on the scale.

I am reminded of another song wafting in the air I breathed in 2012:

Hello,
Are you still chasing the memories in shadows?
Some stay young, some grow old.
Come alive.
There are thoughts unclear you can never hide.
...
I dare you to tell me to walk through fire.
Wear my soul and call me a liar.

-Shinedown, I Dare You (live) (2011)

Every day matters. Each day contributes toward The Three. There is value in maintaining a daily logsheet to note how each day was invested toward each third.

The Internet can be a lonely place.

I begin the day with my ritual of Blade Runner Radio, the track this time is Pris as I meditate on and am mesmerized by The Best of Norway's Railway Cab Views. I am reminded of that moment in 2012 when I applied for a similar job when I departed from my terminal degree stop.

I turn off my ability to see passerbys.

You see, for the past few days, I temporarily opened up NearlyFreeSpeech's ability to track visitors to this site. As it is a static site and Jekyll wipes out the entire public folder for each rebuild, I made a shell script to make quick work of the process requirements. It is more of a snapshot than something live, like with what you might find with a CMS like WordPress.

Whether IP4 or IP6 numbers, I'd punch 'em into NordVPN IP Lookup and found "visitors" that spanned the globe. They were from exotic locales like Hanoi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Sweden, Moscow, Paris, Iowa...of course, they are all seemingly web crawlers or folks prodding and poking to see what they can take. I get it, most websites are dynamic these days with all the holes therein. But, this site is just good ol' HTML. About as dynamic as a dot matrix printout.

This site reminds me of the '90s. View its source; isn't it delightful? It reminds me of the '90s...well, my '90s, anyway. Remember Frontpage '97?! Looks like people are still downloading NVU; it hasn't had an update since June 2005.

Fitness

I've taken an unconventional route into my third day of carnivore: butter. Yes, for the past couple of days, I've just had 1.5 sticks in coffee per day. Per session, I'll pour 16 ounces of butter coffee poured over a Yeti's worth of ice. The mornings are a stick; the afternoons a half.

While there was a time I reserved Sundays for fat fasting, this time, I just stumbled into it because of a parameter: I am not going to eat if I am not hungry.

Simple?

On carbs, we either don't pay attention or perceive hunger signaling. We just look at these artificial devices to tell us the artificial time to tell us when to eat artificially as we eat artificial things.

I suppose it is befitting with this artificial world.

And yet...

In my return to Google, I thought I'd settle with its toolbox. And yet, where do I find myself: on my Linux box, using Brave and composing in Visual Studio Code. I do have Lux playing in the background via a YouTube stream so I'm not wholly apart from Google. And still...

There was one more wave of nostalgia this weekend: I acquired a batch of old CDs. It's a part of my plan to break away from streaming services. It was a yard sale find of a couple of wooden cabinets and 350+ CDs, ALL for $5. I retained these:

1. Better Than Ezra, Friction, Baby (1996)
2. Bon Jovi, Cross Road (1994)
3. Bryan Adams, Waking Up the Neighbors (1991)
4. Bush, The Science of Things (1999)
5. Bush, Razorblade Suitcase (1996)
6. Coldplay, A Rush of Blood in My Head (2002)
7. Collective Soul, Collective Soul (1995)
8. Creed, Human Clay (1999)
9. Enigma, The Cross of Changes (1993)
10. Enya, A Day Without Rain (2000)
11. Eric Clapton, The Cream of Clapton (1995)
12. Frank Sinatra, Come Fly with Me (1958)
13. Frank Sinatra, Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years (1991)
14. Frank Sinatra, Nothing But the Best (2008)
15. Lenny Kravitz, Greatest Hits (2000)
16. Live, Secret Samadhi (1997)
17. Live, The Distance to Here (1999)
18. Matchbox 20, Yourself or Someone Like You (1996)
19. Matchbox 20, Mad Season (2000)
20. Moby, Play (1999)
21. R.E.M., Out of Time (1991)
22. R.E.M., Automatic for the People (1992)
23. R.E.M., eponymous (1988)
24. Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Toward Ecstasy (1993)
25. Silverchair, Frogstomp (1995)
26. Tangerine Dream, Turn of the Tides (1994)
27. The Platters, Golden Hits (1959)
28. The Righteous Brothers, The Moonglow Years (1993)
29. U2, Pop (1997)
30. U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)
31. Various, Forrest Gump the Soundtrack (1994)
32. Various, Twilight soundtrack (2008)
33. Vertical Horizon, Everything You Want (1999)

Again, I got all of that with the with the hinged wooden towers to house them for $5. What's the current price for a tall Americano from Starbucks? In time, I'll rip them all to FLAC and convert them to ogg or mp3 as needed for portability/practicality.

There are a ton of memories on those discs. I suppose the only album that wouldn't have something is that Tangerine Dream title, a band that I began digging weeks back for their Love on a Real Train.

The rest can be associated to a memory—some the entire album, others particular tracks.

My heart drops to some...surges for others...

With this nostalgia of these past days, I must do what is found on a U2 album: I gotta Walk On. There's not much of '23 left and 2024 is gonna be a special one. Still, the past will forever mean something special to me, all the pivotal shifts, whether...

...1994's freedoms...

...2004's journeys...

...2014's new beginnings...

...2024's...