Gethsemane

Fuck all this walking. How do people really enjoy this let alone if I was actually running.  It’s amazing all the things that go through your mind when you’re walking. The music could be blaring, you can be surrounded by people, nature, and it doesn’t really matter. You are alone. You can overthink things. Anxious.  Panic. Keep walking. Faster.  It can roll a cloud around you. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a dark cloud. But it’s a cloud nonetheless. I have been anxious, and overwhelmed, and even underwhelmed all week.

I think I overdid it on my walk a few days ago which is why I took a day off this week. Too much fucking thinking. Is that a thing?  Now I’m walking as I dictate this into my phone. I am back to get 2 miles under my legs. I am just taking it easy today. A few days I kept trying to make sure I got under a 20 minute mile, mostly because it meant that I wouldn’t be wasting time on my phone or texting or looking at social media. Just walk asshole.

I probably really should watch where I’m walking. But we know that I don’t do anything the easy way so why do that as well. Have I mentioned that it’s creepy even walking through the woods here at the park sometimes. I feel like Jason Voorhees is going to come out of somewhere and kill me. Meanwhile I’m not sure there’s ever been any incidences hear of anything. But, what the fuck do I know.

I miss being a kid. I think it’s hard to make friends at any age anymore. Social media has totally fucked up friendships. You are a kid, and television shows and music and things like that made you think that your friends were going to be friends forever. What you said was really what you mean. Now we have vague booking, 17 different avenues to be angry at each other and it gets to be too much I guess. We were lied to.

Friends are not always friends forever. I am trying really hard to think back at my oldest friends and none of them are from my youth or at this point even high school. Yes, I have those acquaintances, but they aren’t coming over to hang out by the pool, they are not even coming to see the band at this point. Have I met a few good ones in my older age, absolutely. Definitely not an easy thing to do and somehow I have accomplished it.

Have you ever just thought it would be easier to just disappear. Would the weight of the world be off your shoulders? Would you just make it harder for others? I am not talking about suicide so don’t get your panties in a bunch, I’m talking about physically disappearing. We’ve all seen that movie haven’t we?

I am not disappearing. Have you seen me in person? Where the fuck am I going to disappear? I think sometimes it’s just all gets to me.

I am a lot of things, invisible will never be one of them. But see, these are the things that go through your head when you take long walks in the park by yourself. 2 miles might not be a lot to anyone reading this. But to these tree trunks that I carry around, plus everything else that I do, holy fuck.  2 miles seems to be my sweet spot so far.

I AM going to disappear a little bit. Let me explain. My Snapchat, not that I have too many friends on there but it will be coming down at some point over the next few weeks. I am getting rid of everything @egophilly. It’s time. I really miss taking pictures, but really struggle with making ends meet that way and will probably sell most of my stuff except a small kit. Just enough to do some pictures for friends when the time comes and if needed. Kids by ego on Facebook has already come down and so has the ego studios page. Once I can assure that I don’t have anything set up with the email accounts to the two websites those won’t get paid for again either. If I have the same luck as I’ve had in the past of letting go of websites they will probably become some Japanese porn sites like Big Romeo with 1G was at one point.  I had to buy that motherfucker off.

I know you’re probably scratching your head at this point hear me out. Instagram will continue to be my weight loss journey, with a little bit of my life sprinkled in there as well. Unfortunately Twitter will stay the same, because too many of my coworkers are on there and I share work stuff there as well. Facebook well slowly just become a way to share some family stuff, of course princess Luna Lovegood and Giuseppe, and my musical stuff. See – there is a home for all the little pieces of me. I guess there is some pressure involved with putting myself out there. It’s not a bad thing because I know that I’ve helped a lot of people, but sometimes I actually need the push and have nowhere else to turn to.

I am out there. I am not afraid. I am disappeared.

So now that I’ve babbled enough, and given you plenty to read while you sit on the toilet and wonder if you just should’ve stopped reading this three minutes ago I will tell you where I am with my weight loss journey.

As usual things are not progressing as fast as I would like. We all know it comes on a lot easier than it is to takeoff. I wish everything we did was as easy as getting fat. But I have three weddings at the end of October and I have to get into tuxedos that I have not worn since last fall. Something has to give.

I have definitely curbed my alcohol intake since Labor Day. Now don’t get me wrong, I will tell you I was absolutely shitfaced a few weeks ago. So many things going on and a crazy Friday night to boot.  UGH!   I don’t like being drunk.

I am many people drunk. I am brutally honest, Franco. I am carry my heart on my sleeve, Franco. I am angry, say mean shit Franco and sometimes a mix of everything. The boss will just tell you that I’m super lovey. I think there’s more to that.  I know that while you’re trying to lose weight, your body has to break down the alcohol before it will go back to breaking down the fat. I also know that a 1.5 ounce shot of Jack Daniels is 104 cal. If you don’t eat anything all day, you only get to drink eight of those across an entire day to be under 2000 cal.  I don’t want to be drunk anymore, I am definitely going to have to start going back to my very curved drinking that I did when I started this whole journey.

I know this pandemic has sucked for everybody. I am not the only one out here trying to get by. When we first started, we would make jokes across my company on what time happy hour started. They were having all kinds of organized happy hours so that people can actually socialize a little bit. And then it all just kind of stopped. Maybe because the happy hours got earlier and earlier, I don’t know, I’m sure my West Coast family love them a lot. I just don’t want to be that person that NEEDS that bottle, right now I am not. But sometimes I think those things can easily get out of control. Kind of the same way when I have a procedure, or a root canal, I never fill the pain prescription. I am OK with Tylenol and just feeling what I feel.

Why did Franco just write a whole paragraph that sounds he’s going into recovery? Don’t worry I’m not. But I did come home from the shore on Saturday after my show because I did not want to stay down there and drink any more of the calories that I worked my ass off to take off all week long. Some people may call that moderation. Those are skinny people. They drink a bottle of wine, eat a few pieces of cheese and call it moderation.  Trust me. I know stuff.

But I have been walking, almost every day. I have con’d some of my friends into walking with me. This past weekend at the shore we went to get lunch on Saturday, and I made sure we walked a mile and a half to eat it and then a mile and a half back to my condo. I earned those three chicken fingers and couple of sweet potato french fries. (Back off keto Police, I logged at all)

Your moderation will never work for me. My moderation will never work for you. I think I will be at my goal for the month of September by the first. My body has been stuck at 8 pounds lost for this month for quite a few days now and I have been throwing everything that I possibly can at it. I’m not starving myself. I am at 1600 to 1700 cal diet. A good deal away from the Dr. Now diet that a part of me wants to try, only because I want to see if I could stick out 30 days.  A 1200 cal high protein low carb diet like he gives the people on my 600 pound life. I find myself screaming at the television when the show is on, and I’ve always wanted to just try to walk a mile in their shoes with their diet. Honestly maybe in October,  I have to do that. I am crazy enough.

But here I am, getting ready to go into Wildwood for a boys weekend, in my head already playing out a do this and not that scenario and having one last hurrah for summer 2020. And if you’ve been following me long enough you know that I usually recap everything. And I have been holding off. So maybe next week. I did record a short song that I wanted to put some pictures to of all my friends from this past summer who braved the pandemic to hang out with me. I hope to get to that after this weekend. There are a few more people at Castaways that I want to make sure I thank and include for being so awesome this past summer.

My grandma passed away 12 years ago today and not a day goes by I don’t miss her.

This is me trying. Over and over and over again. Is it enough? I don’t have the answer to that. But I will tell you that I make zero apologies for who I am.  If I let you into my inner circle, then I would walk through fire for you, that is how I was raised, that was how I was brought up, I am always going to have feelings, I am always going to throw out the feels, and that is how my mom and grandma showed me how to love. That’s going to be lost in the generation behind me and if you knew anything about it you’re going to miss it.

I’m going to head to the shore today, play one last show, breath in so much goddamn salt air that it fills my lungs for days, and then I’m going to come home and start over.

There are six days left in the month, two of them I will be at the shore. There are 98 days left in 2020. There are 136 days until my birthday. I can do anything for that long right?

I guess only time will tell.

Some takeaways this week:

1. Mean what you say.
2. Keep moving forward
3. Never apologize for who you are.
4. Mute your fucking microphone.
5. Don’t get drunk before condo association meetings.
6. I’ve been registered to vote since I was 18, I am not a fucking heathen.
7. Chris Stapleton’s voice is amazing.  Fight me!

I will check back with you on October 1.

In the meantime a few songs played over and over again while I wrote this. You can find them below.

Hope is not cancelled!

Franco