PROMPT: Energy

Daily writing prompt
What things give you energy?

Food and air, mostly. Ultimately, the Sun, I suppose.

PROMPT: Favorite Album

Daily writing prompt
What’s your all-time favorite album?

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

PROMPT: Without Music

Daily writing prompt
What would your life be like without music?

Decidedly less funky, and the consolation that I would no longer be caught humming embarrassing earworms, like Sweet Caroline, would be thin.

PROMPT: Celebrate

Daily writing prompt
How do you celebrate holidays?

Well, if someone else is doing fireworks, I’ll go see, but I value my fingers and hearing too much to DIY it. But there is nothing like fireworks on Easter to warm the heart. Or on Arbor Day, or National Salsa Dancing Day (March 11th, mark your calendars. Also, don’t confuse it with National Salsa Day — honoring the spicy condiment on May 1st.) Nothing says holiday like fireworks.

PROMPT: Cooking Fail

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

A blunder once in a while does not rise to tragedy. I burn toast on a regular basis. Think about that. It’s the most rudimentary culinary activity imaginable, and I fuck it up at least weekly.

To be fair, I think my toaster might be a North Korean imposter, part of a plot to undermine the Western Capitalist world one ruined breakfast at a time.

PROMPT: Lesson

Daily writing prompt
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Few things in life matter as much as they feel they do. Almost nothing is perilous, while many things feel as though they are. Don’t let illusory feelings keep one from living boldly.

Or, as the Epicureans liked to say, “What is painful is easy to endure.”

FIVE WISE LINES [September 2025]

The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.

George Mikes, How To Be an Alien

From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.

Jonathan weiner, Long for this world

Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.

Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General

To know how to eat is to know how to live.

Auguste Escoffier

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark twain

PROMPT: This Evening

What are you doing this evening?

Who can know such things? I’m not a fortuneteller. But as I just came off a travel cycle, a betting person would put his money on something sleep related.

PROMPT: Use Regularly

Daily writing prompt
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?

“Facetious.” But I only use it so much because I am it so much.

PROMPT: Ideal Home

Daily writing prompt
What does your ideal home look like?

Big enough to live in it; small enough not to live for it.

Preferably, it teleports on a regular basis, so I don’t have to — you know— live in one place for the rest of my life.