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.
274/365 05/23/2026
“Niles, where shall we go on holiday?”
Niles gripped his newspaper and held his breath.
“We have practically the whole world to choose from, and for the life of me, I can’t find a single thing that makes one place better than another, and I simply must have your input.”
273/365 05/22/2026
There are any number of things we could say about Robert Hammond. That he used to box at Oxford. That he spent 30 days in a wet hole while all around him artillery shells filled the air with a rain of hot, sharp metal and thunderous blasts so loud as to empty the brain. That he was kind to children and saw them but could only speak to them as if they were tiny adults, a habit the children felt somewhat disconcerting and also quite funny. But the important thing here, and something in which all these other things must be wrapped, was what we’ll say about his love for Agnes Murdoch.
272/365 05/21/2026
The reactions I have gotten over the years have sometimes been shocking: my extended family stunned, then enraged when I sacrificed my own father to save a town cowering in the shadow of a rumbaing volcano. A platoon aghast after I shot their sergeant and tossed his body to be consumed by pirañas so we could ford a river and complete the mission.
I just don’t get them. And I suppose they don’t get me. But in my mind, it’s simple…
271/365 05/20/2026
The end of the campaign. We gathered in a generic hotel suite, as generic as many we’d seen during the long, last slog up to Election Day and tried to put a good face on things.
270/365 05/19/2026
The parcels that arrived came in all shapes and sizes. Thin padded envelopes and hulking cardboard boxes. Folded boxes the size of a smart attache and mylar bags precisely perforated and with an included adhesive strip to help ensure its use in some future transfer of goods. The came in recyclable, non-recyclable, and sneaky—large brown-paper envelopes made waterproof with a plastic lining on the inside. Everything had to be checked and double checked and mostly ended up in three neat piles in the middle of the living room.
269/365 05/18/2026
I felt like there was something I was supposed to be doing. A small tightness would settle in my chest, and a small dread would creep up into the back of my brain, and I would swear something was missing. Some small thing has going forgotten, and as it sat in some small, dark corner of the not-doing, it would fester and grow, going from a small nothing into a massive something that would burst forth from the forgotten and let itself be known as it romped and wrecked its way through my life.
268/365 05/17/2026
Item: Salinger Straight Fit Chino Pant in distressed khaki
Provenance: Purchased by the artist from the Ralph Lauren Men’s Flagship store, 867 Madison Avenue on a family trip in March, 2024. Authenticated as genuine Ralph Lauren via the authentication QR code. Authenticated as the artist’s pants via digital archive and printed materials.
Notes: Original, factory distressing in the form of same-material patching, decorative threadwork and hand-applied white paint spatters is augmented with additional paint from the artist’s own hand in pink and black (see catalog photos). It is assumed the pants were worn by the artist as he worked on any one of the “Fallen Kings” series between 2024 and 2032.
267/365 05/16/2026
“Imagine,” he said, “If I’d had schizophrenia.”
We all paused and nodded somberly. Really considered it.
“I’ve been thinking about that lately. How if I had schizophrenia, with my dad having Alzheimer’s. Just…just how untenable it would be.”
We kept silent, not allowed to speak until the speaker—the person sharing asked for input. They weren’t our rules. I mean, none of us had some up with them. They were just The Rules, and we abided by them.
265/365 05/14/2026
Before he had stopped drinking, the dirty martini had been a day’s balm for Roger Styles, a mark to end each day. The first, deliciously bright and briny. Ice cold and the flavors of olive, juniper, bright citrus dancing their olfactory boogie as he savored the first and second sips. The second, third and forth martinis of an evening provided less delight as the taste became inconsequential, but each kept the mood up and the party going as he rode the wave of inhibition that allowed him to feel the feelings he’d lived so much of his life deeply afraid to feel.