I either closed or abandoned accounts from a litany of vendors:

Google

Clearly, my final departure of Google is in the works. It's not gonna be the blitzkrieg of my other services for Google's tentacles scratch and claw in so many areas! But, I am acclimating in a different direction. I've already moved to paid email for the going rate of the euro at €3/month for the year. I've got Brave Browser in the starter role.

Ultimately, I cast aside Google's progressive (and damning) ideology; this frog ain't in that boiling pot!

I've thought about going with NordVPN for a cloud hosting backup solution, but I suppose I've been eroded by its marketing campaign: they pop up into all of my YouTube favorites! Ryan George, City Planner Plays, Viva La Dirt League, Scammer Payback, Kitboga, and...I dunno maybe even squeezed between boxes of Little Debbie's over at Matt Mitchell's place!

...which brings up the most challenging part: dropping off YouTube when my family uses it as its central entertainment. See, I just dropped $150 for YouTube Premium for the year! But look, that's a sunk cost—DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT! As to the other, I'm honored to take up the servant leadership role for my family; I'll make the play. We've already re-emphasized tabletop together by dropping a heavy chunk for the 5-6 player expansion packs for Catan and Catan: Cites & Knights. And I'm whirling together a spell as the DM in picking up our DnD sessions again.

And while I thought about plopping 7 years of future domain ownership for INTJBill.com to match the 7 years I've had thus far, I just renewed for another year because...

...We'll give it a shot
Whoa, we're half way there
Whoa oh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear
Whoa oh, livin' on a prayer

It's important for me to capture my words down onto paper. I'll never be here again.

Bartlett Walking

I am also wrapping my painting of Bartlett with my morning walks. It was something I did from December to February with its own memories contained, but I have since walked into a different space.

  Good morning, America, how are ya?

I'm happy. Oh, nothing's changed. As these are the days where I haven't completed a single day of achieving my step goal of 10.9.44, it seems fantasy of reaching my 39-day streak again. But...

...that'll take care of itself...I'm me. I'm always me. And it's not lost on me that this post shares the same title as this one from June 20, 2020.

Sometimes it feels like a fantasy that I'll even get to October 9, 2044. Life at 66 seems so foreign. And yet, it is a mere 20 years away. And 20 years ago, on an August 12, I wrote Here's to 2001. You know how I love WWII history; interestingly enough, a hundred years prior of 10/9/2044 was the Tolstoy conference where Churchill pushed a handwritten note over to Stalin to propose postwar Europe would be divided between the Allies and the Soviets. But that's not the sort of thing to base a daily goal.

  I've seen fire and I've seen rain

I'm content. In a gray 50s yesterday, I shoved my lawn mower across the front yard. My heart rate was not perplexing, but I had nothing in the tank. In short, it felt like I ran through a cold night; I felt that old, hollow feeling. And maybe folks might say, "Dude! You don't got it, Jack!" But, I still have the drive inside, even if...

YouTube Link

  Lord, I can't change
  Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah!

  I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
  It felt good to be out of the rain
  In the desert you can't remember your name...

Regarding my fitness status, there's really nothing new to write from a couple of days ago. All training is suspended, but my carnivore continues. I don't know if I'll get that -1% bump on April 14. But, if I must settle for a -4.4% weightloss, that sure ain't bad! I'm not resorting to emotional eating—

—there are no Twinkies in my life!

—no JJ's Apple Pies!

—no Pancho's cheese dip!

In fact, if I wasn't eating an inherently anti-inflammatory diet already for the past 131 days, I suspect I would be WRECKED!

Looking back, Saturday night was the last time I slept in that upper-50s/lower-60s BPM range. Since Sunday, March 3, nights have been 80s-90s with one night in the 100s. I've considered benching my Garmin so as to not be reminded!

I have confidence that my body is responding appropriately to the threats at hand. And if I must dial back my sensitivity a couple of notches to achieve success...

Nevertheless, I am reminded of this theme again, this time from this morning's 1 Peter:

All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord remains forever.

1 Peter 1:24-25, ESV

...which is a callback to Isaiah:

A voice says, "Cry!" And I said, "What shall I cry?"

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers,
the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.

The grass withers,
the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40:6-8, ESV

Last night, I watched an invigorating documentary, Is Genesis History? There was a time I was an ardent student in apologetics. Today, I value it as just encouragement when the waves of this world crash against me (for that matter, I take comfort, that my Father chooses the king in power—not the media or the voter. Daniel 2:21).

A feature I like about this film is that the shooting locations include places that have meant a lot to me: the Memphis Zoo, Discovery Park of America, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Chino Valley (well, not a whole lot of value in that last one, but I did buy my first LCD monitor over in Prescott). I've been to those places; I have seen with my own eyes God's handiwork and can understand how everything was shaped by the violent upheaval of the Earth and its immediate aftermath in the months thereafter.

The film also highlighted to me the value of how much was packed into the DNA of each "kind" so that we can have so many cats, so many dogs, etc. Our world was kicked off with complexity with an ecosphere already in place, a symbiont circle of sorts.

I hear so much media blast garbage that this sort of discussion does my soul good.

And how this song interwoven with Piper's message tugs on my heart as my tears well up...

YouTube Link