Day 10: Birthday Homework

This routine here, one-tenth of which you’re reading right now, is what I have named Myself, only more so: a daily reader. It is also known as the thing I decided to try for the calendar year 2026.

I decided on this daily posting route because I was following this line of thinking: I was in need of an excuse to talk to myself more. If I could schedule enough material, far enough ahead of time, my brain would have a chance to forget what I’d written, and future emails would appear in my inbox from my past self but with the sensation of someone (else) writing especially to me.

It’s the writerly version of rubbing the left arm after the right hand has fallen asleep. I use what I know about my body to hop the fence and cut across the field of time.

Today is my birthday, and the prompt is a gift for you, from you.

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Writing prompt but basically homework because you don’t want to deny me such a reasonably-sized pleasure on my birthday after all: Write and plant yourself a note to find. Ideas if you need them—

• Tuck it in the back of a book you might read in the next few years
• Schedule a text or email to yourself for some future date (maybe on a random, not an important, date: I have a hunch it will be more of a surprise to your brain that way)
• Flip ahead in a space you use to track or plan things (a planner, as it were, or a wall calendar) and write the note there

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