I wrote these words last evening:

Awash with melancholy, I gaze upward, my search gazing deep into the night sky. My attention falls downward toward the glow of Memphis, the horizon a backdrop to my fence flipbook of Yale Road. The passing destinations with headlights weave narratives I will never know.

"You can't go home again."

I then promptly sat down and ate a bowl of tangerines.

On my run through country music nostalgia the other day, I ran across these yellowed-by-time lyrics. While at the time this blockquote was a square peg, it fits into today's post:

What good is a man who hasn't got a dream
'Bout as good as a car with no gasoline

-Neal McCoy, No Doubt About

This isn't the first time I've felt this...I feel the passion that leads me to and resonates in retrowave. Each day I wake up and it feels like there is no purpose, there is no target for which to invest effort to achieve. I aimlessly meet the day. I suppose some folks do well with that. Just plop a captain's hat atop my head, crank out some yacht rock and head out to the sunset. But, even that, has a target! The 13th Expedition: Of Yachts & Speedboats has a playlist that encapsulated it.

And thus, I have a challenge before me. What an opportunity! I've got one helluva rucksack with me. While I cannot do that which my heart longs for, that is, to feel those European cobblestones on my feet or soak into my skin the amber of a Caribbean sunset, I can set a series of intermediate targets that will better aid me with a future date.

I-269 is an interstate bypass that as its initial path was being cleared, I planted my high school truck in the mud. With country tunes running shotgun and before a weekend shift at Piggly Wiggly, I was where I shouldn't have been with all the bravado a 17-year-old guy exudes. And my rig was bumper deep in a viscous vat of mud. Since cell phones were atypical for a 1995-1996 teen to have, I had to walk a mile down the road for help. I tried to flag down somebody on a dirt bike. But paralleling life, they hightailed it in the other direction. Folks do that.

Today, I 269: it is where my mark on the scale lands. Like that dirt road, summer's 213 lbs is in the rearview mirror.

So, I'm back in the game; I'm carnivore. I watched the beautiful Kelly Hogan's These tips will start working for you TODAY. While I have largely applied this in the past, their reminder is what I need now:

1. Embrace your desperation
2. Hope abounds
3. Ditch sweet tastes
4. Eat enough, overall
5. The junk must GO
6. Anticipatory dopamine
7. Three meals
8. Move it, baby
9. Redefine "comfort" and "treats"
10. Salt, water, electrolytes?
11. Variety
12. Stress management
13. Full package of the food
14. Destroy your enemy
15. Replace your happy brain-hormones
16. Get educated
17. True hunger
18. This, too, shall pass
19. Stick to YOUR parameters
20. Get support

The money quotation for me is at 29:52. Just like the mental space of my own workouts, Kelly recognizes the value to "focus on the pain."