In July, 2025, I began participating in the Tom Sachs/NikeCraft ISRU Summer Camp. This series of challenges was designed to help break bad habits (mostly the phone addiction) and forge new rituals. One ritual, Output Before Input, asked us to create first thing. Eyes open; set pen, pencil, crayon, etc. to paper, cardboard, wood, your cat. Didn’t matter. What mattered most was putting something into the world before letting too much of the world into you. I began with a normal ritual: a simple record of the day before: things I remembered, things I didn’t want to forget. But honestly? That was boring. On August 22, I thought, “What if I wrote openings every day? What if every day I started a novel? What if I did it for a year?”
That’s what we have here (so far). Every one is a shitty first draft. Some shittier than others.
The process: I wake and then scribble in a notebook. About once a week—every couple-few days—I type them up here, unchanged. I have no idea if I’ll ever do anything with them. If you’d like to do something with one of them, please feel free.
174/365 02/12/2026
The evil Dr. Vargoz, formerly of Fort Wayne, Indiana; before that, Chicago, Illinois, and now—this moment—of Cell C-118 in Hayworth Meta Penitentiary, sat up late nights and plotted his revenge.
173/365 02/11/2026
And so it came the humans finally rebelled against hyperbole, purposefully missing opportunities labeled as “can’t miss.” Hiding their eyes and looking elsewhere when the world asserted “MUST SEE!” Buffalo wings were no longer amazing, and everyone agreed no one was HUMILIATED on live TV, as much as the news headlines screamed otherwise.
172/365 02/10/2026
This was during The Lonely Years, right after you’d left me for Prague and that whole thing happened between Pablo and Ramone.
171/365 02/09/2026
He desperately longed to return to a time where pretending wasn’t what happened. To the time when he was a boy where riding his bike was flying an X-wing. Not pretending to fly an X-wing, no. A time when the world would drop away and his brain constructed a new one in its place.
170/365 02/08/2026
There came to him, from time to time, a great and shining feeling. Life unmoored, his vision swam; feelings inside him like being trapped in a fun house. Tilt-A-Whirl while walking to the office restroom.
169/365 02/07/2026
IT is the great leveler. The computers asking people to make predictable systems. To regulate processes. They bring all the little bits and pieces and one-offs, corral them, and make them same. Smooth the edges. Eliminate surprise.
168/365 02/06/2026
The Gentleman Scholar. Not a gentleman scholar. The Gentleman Scholar, an award bestowed by The International Society of Gentlemen once every four years in recognition of the highest achievement in scholarship and gentlemanliness. And this cycle, it belonged to Lord Edward Scalesdon of Merryweather, who discovered the news in a paper he was forced to steal from the news agent because he did not, at the moment, have resources enough to buy it.
The Gentleman Scholar. He let the phrase gambol ‘round his brain a turn or two.
167/365 02/05/2026 (Extra 01)
Sometimes I chase him around the house wearing a giant horse head.
No, I’m wearing the head. The house is just the house.
Nice? I guess so. I mean, three bedroom, one-and-a-half baths. It’s going to need a new roof soon, I think. That hail storm really did a number on it. Can we get back to the chasing? I’d like to talk about the chasing.
I mean, it’s white, I guess? Off-white. With green trim. It’s over on Beaumont. This side of the tracks.
166/365 02/04/2026
The car died when we were three spots back from the parking guys. My daughter, Lydia, 12 and full of venom because puppets on ice was “The stupidest thing I’d ever heard” released a scoff that filled the car with tension.
“Lydia,” my wife said, but I could tell she was also pissed.
165/365 02/03/2026
Here is what happens: a couple splits up, and everyone picks sides. It’s not malicious, it’s not intentional. It just happens. The couple might even say to everyone, “Everyone, it’s ok. These things happen. A couple may run its course and decide that the couple no longer serves the individuals. That everyone involved will be best served by a dissolution of the couple. We love you all very much, but we are deciding on a conscious uncoupling. And no one has to pick sides. There are no sides here. We’re all on one side.”
Of course, no couple would ever talk this in real life, but you get the idea. The gist, so to speak.