PROMPT: Personal Item

Daily writing prompt
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

I think it was a sword, back in the days when swordsmanship was among the subjects i studied. But I can say, with some measure of pride, that I really don’t know for sure because I don’t really put much value in owning things and have become ever less interested in possessing more stuff.

When you’re a traveler, they’re all just anchors, and not goods.

Anything expensive I buy better be absolutely essential, have multiple uses, or —ideally— both.

PROMPT: Podcasts

Daily writing prompt
What podcasts are you listening to?

I don’t properly listen to any, but I watch clips and segments from many on YouTube — mostly those of comedians, but some of a popular science or current events / international affairs / macroeconomic nature.

PROMPT: Subject in School

Daily writing prompt
What was your favorite subject in school?

Depends upon my age and phase [as in whether I wanted to be a cowboy, a doctor, a race car driver, Batman, or a misanthrope / rapscallion at that particular time.]

Generally speaking, I had the strange (not to mention unproductive) tendency for science to top of the list while mathematics was usually dead last.

PROMPT: Screen Time

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

Keep moving. One can’t be zombified by the machine when one is swimming, running, or otherwise getting a move on.

PROMPT: Time

Do you need time?

I suppose I do. Without it, instead of life being one thing after the other, it would be everything all at once. The latter seems chaotic. But maybe one could get used to being timeless. I have no basis for comparison. I’ve always been just in time. Come to think of it, it would be nice not to have to conjugate verbs.

PROMPT: Three Years

What will your life be like in three years?

I have no idea. That’s the beauty of life, and the curse of living during period in which technology will soon grow completely beyond our control. Life might be an ever-better version of what it is now, or I might be living in a cave trying to stay out of the way of the war between Skynet and our would-be Alien overlords. Or I might be farming in a world that has EMP’d itself back to the Stone Age to avoid being overtaken by technology. Nothing is certain but that change will come.

PROMPT: Invent a Holiday

Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.

National Slap an Idiotic Billionaire Day. A day during which anyone can open-hand slap any billionaire who says anything radically divorced from reality or which – despite all necessary resources to self-educate – shows a woeful lack of understanding of how the world works. (Doing so without repercussion, provided one uses only the force generated by one’s own musculature.)

It’s not that I’m anti-billionaire, but I have noticed a striking number of people who’ve amassed tremendous sums of money but who couldn’t pass sophomore economics without a daddy buying a library.

PROMPT: Favorite Websites

What are your favorite websites?

I fall down the YouTube rabbit hole more than I’d like to admit.

PROMPT: Historical Event

Daily writing prompt
What historical event fascinates you the most?

The Holocaust and other killings of massive scale (e.g. Cambodia’s Killing Fields, Stalin’s Great Purge, etc.) How does villainy triumph on such vast scales? Is there something in our nature that’s just not right, that’s ripe for lunacy under some conditions? What the hell is wrong with humanity?

PROMPT: Everyone Should Know

Daily writing prompt
What’s something you believe everyone should know.

While any individual’s ability to substantially change the world is minimal, one’s ability to change how one experiences the world is vast. Cultivate the dispassionate witness. #Sakshi Bhava

Also, how to swim, change a tire, and juggle while riding a unicycle.