It's liver Friday! OK, so I'm developing a day schema that's kicking off for The 38th Expedition:

• fat focus SUNDAY
• fish MONDAY
• "nothing! absolutely nothing! you're so stupid!" TUESDAY
• fat focus WEDNESDAY
• fish THURSDAY
• liver FRIDAY
• steak SATURDAY

Before the bustle of the day, the environment was around 50℉ with 60% humidity at the 6 AM hour. How my heart yearned to move in and around the University of Memphis campus again!

Movement is important, of course; dreaming is critical. That's what I do when I go for my long walks, imagine a world to be, a futurescape.

I have not moved in The 37th Expedition—just one walking day and one lifting session. That was it! My take? On Sunday, I'll weigh in and find that I lost 4.5% and miss out on how daily training gives me an additional 1%. Thus, I don't get that extra 2¼ lbs and I don't hit that target of 215.

But, it ain't Sunday yet! Since about the start of November, I have lost about 60 lbs because I see butter and "With a rebel yell, (I cry), 'More, more, more,' wow!" While unlikely, it is possible I could be sub-200 lbs by next month's Memorial Day.

Yesterday, I packed away the clothes I wore at the start of this adventure. They fit some other guy. Admittedly, I felt nostalgic when I grabbed my pullover that protected me in all of those 20-something mornings in walks to Starbucks and my old Piggly Wiggly, chasing the ghosts of my past down forgotten roads.

My body has done a fantastic job with its repairs. There's just a slight numbness remaining in my core, arms, and legs with an ever slight tingling to my fingertips. I now fully experience the...passions of a dropped ice cube on my big toe now! And that poison ivy—boy howdy! My heart beats more like—well, the drum riff from In the Air Tonight comes into mind rather than some garage cover band of Journey.

As to my stamina—well, gone are those days when I had to sit down after standing for 5 minutes. I can hang out on a ladder for a good while! I suspect I'm still sensitive to postural hypotension otherwise known as That Starry-Eyed Thing That Would Happen in the Great Water Fast of December 2006 When I’d Stand and Pick up a Massive LaserJet Network Printer at the Grand Canyon Railway—you know the one.

My intent is that this will be my last post about all that nonsense. My body has successfully repelled the zombie invasion, the greatest sickness I have ever known. That said, though from an acute perspective (or "a cute" 'cause I was hot in that era of 99-2001), that particular honor goes to THAT Y2K bug, strep throat, back as a Kraft MIS intern. It swung over and shut down my hearing which I hear is bad, but I couldn't hear. I just knew I couldn't do tech support if I couldn't listen to my users.

Now from this point, as the year progresses, the more convinced I am it is a 2020 play:

• Focus on personal growth. Be ravenous for more.
• Ignore the world as it burns in an election year.
• Catch up with folks at its end, Armistice Station.
• Open up the secret envelope!

I have hungered for the rejuvenating depths of this blessed 2:30 AM hour. Of course, I don't regret sleeping in for those 41 days—my body demanded that. But, I did have to relinquish something dear to me!

This is more than a quiet space to lift iron or pump the heart—those are good, don't get me wrong. But there is something profoundly life-infusing in this place to meditate on truth and its context in my life and beyond.

As I hear the rain splash on the concrete outside, I think it's no different than those things people flag as ❗️IMPORTANT. It's all just a cascade of noise that will soon be forgotten. What are today's top national headlines on news media? The kind of stuff that the whole nation must be told—do they really matter? Will it shape this month for you?

I consider how our lives are mortared up with inconsequential bits that keep us walled up from the things that do matter.

Have you ever walked through a solemn and desolate graveyard to consider—really consider—the lives before you? Oft, we just look at the year on a headstone and exclaim to seemingly no one, "Golly, that was a while ago." It is as though we're just mindlessly stumbling around an antique mall for what we might unearth. We forget that they are people whom...

...yearned hopelessly and loved from afar in unmet passion; ...celebrated success with a contagious smile and a wink;
...stammered out expletives toward the ones they love the most;
...wavered before the unknown future as their parents lay dead before them;
...jumped at the sight of a spider.

What mattered the most in their lives? (Hint: It wasn't national policy.)

Will you become just a year bygone?