In which the internet gets for really real.

In acknowledging the barreling pace of mortality, what have you done about it?

I went back to the gym.

It's astonishing how quickly 4 nights a week turns into none when one is not watching oneself - and how quickly one's devout adjustment in diet 180s and suddenly one is a fatty again. Like lightning! The body must be trained so long before it learns. Am still much stronger than I know what to do with - there is no small measure of joy in bouncing around feeling relatively lethal, back to the place where I am confident I could move necessary weights and pull doors off hinges if so prompted by situation. Am probably not ready to play at jaws-of-life, but it's good to feel that way - all this moving metal about and hulking around and feeling vaguely predatory. It's a good way to wash out the days.

Work has been close to horrifying - long hours and little satisfaction, it's consuming my conversations and seems to be all I think about; thus the gym and the rededication to being a bit more brutish is doubly welcome. What is missed most immediately is the energy - bouncing out of bed no matter the hour, being bright-eyed after that work day is over - life is much more lived, even if 2 hours a day are spent somewhat sweaty and in the tireless pursuit of lifting lumps of metal in tightly constricted patterns, it feels good.

Am still not pretty. Working on it.

Perhaps surprising no one, the writing has stalled - have two poems circling my head about Memphis and Manhattan, the punishing audacity in what I spent so long coloring love, how hard it is to properly eloquate what it is to act this fool. Am trying to find a balance between the earnest and less dangerous than I thought needing another person and the...blind possessiveness that seems to mark my earlier 'relationships' - which is to say the girls I pined after so miserably without a care for what they thought about the situation. I feel so young sometimes and usually about love - then so old looking back at who it was thought I could just...disregard the things in front of me, hoping on some song lyric resolution.

My love is no less unique for being my own.

Since my father passed I have been hedging around the things I feel might name me a man to whatever wind is listening - relinquishing some of these selfish ideas, adjusting the way it is I see those I purport to love, allowing a little desperate longing along the way. Think I know, now, what. But wonder how am seen in return. I'm sad a lot. I am confident when I tell myself that being alone is alright if I get this one more chance - but so scared at the time flying by if it turns out I am wrong and never get it.

All said and done, I am pretty sure it's still worth it.