The First Day

January 1, 2026

Jan 01, 2026

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” —John Denver

My plan for the first day of 2026 was to wake up whenever I wanted and watch the Twilight Zone marathon, an annual tradition that cannot be explained, given the accessibility of commercial-free episodes on demand. Maybe I like the random appearance of episodes I love (“It’s a Good Life,” with Billy Mumy, and “The Living Doll,” with Talky Tina) and those I’ve never seen before (“He’s Alive,” a prophetic episode about the hateful, weak, and selfish fascist who imagines he’s being led by a back-from-the-dead Adolf Hitler). (Rod Serling died at age 50 from a heart attack during open-heart surgery. He was a smoker. He remains one of my favorite writers, and every Twilight Zone feels poignant and relevant to me.)

Perhaps I watch the FX marathon for the same reason I have listened to music on shuffle since the first iPod days: The surprise of Peggy Lee followed by Silversun Pickups, then boygenius and Cheap Trick. Surprise me!

I didn’t make any formal resolutions, though I did make myself a promise to finish my children’s book about bugs. That was one of two promises I made last year, and I fulfilled one: finishing my poetry manuscript and finding a publisher. (Stay tuned for its release later this year.)

A chronic list-maker, I have a bunch of things I want to do (including make more lists):

Recreate Matt Mahurin’s child-abuse image from an ‘80s “Mother Jones” cover, featuring a hand mobile over a crib, but make the actual hand mobile out of doll arms
Work on my Motherbird sculpture that I’ve been planning for about 15 years.
Create a doll head fountain
Finish Utah’s sunflower house number plaque
Write more
Take more photos
Whiten my teeth so I can smile more
Re-establish my regular exercise routine
Quit smoking
Stand up from sitting on the floor without using my hands
Repaint the kitchen and rehang all the artwork

Motherbird collage. I bought the egg form a few months ago, but the mannequin still sits in my shop, naked.

I happened to scroll by a reel today in which a man explains in 30 seconds the difference between a neurotypical person and a person with ADHD. The first is a regular pen with a point. The pen says to put something in the mail, and the point puts the thing in the mail. The second is one of those multi-colored pens with six different levers. Each represents a different thing to do, and when they’re all pushed into service at the same time, no point makes it to the pen, and nothing gets done.

Sure, I do press all those levers at the same time. But I also get a lot of things done and a few of them half-done. The sunflower mosaic house number got partway done last year. It keeps trying to push its point through the to-dos.

In October, I got a full-time job that I liked, but it didn’t seem to need me as much as it thought. In January, I will become a contractual consultant for that job, working just 16 hours a week. I considered this a good thing because I would have time to attack that list. I don’t have any of those six-chamber pens, but I have dozens of Sharpies, all uncapped at the same time and drying out while they wait for me.

Last year, politics kept me from taking a photo a day. I stopped on the 19^th. On the 21^st, a contact of mine on Facebook posted this meme, which I shared as my photo of the day. I knew my years of photos a day had come to an end.

Swiftly unfriended, but she still has a lot of mutuals.

After watching hours of Twilight Zone episodes, though, I decided to give it another try. Rod Serling said, “the ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.” Fortunately, I still felt, and I spent the next seven months working for our local chapter of Indivisible. I helped at events. I showed up to rallies. I wrote our website and newsletters.

This, I thought, this writing and photographing and chronicling was just omphaloskepsis. I needed to focus on a greater purpose, lest I get sucked into the examination of every piece of lint in my navel.

In addition to watching Twilight Zone and writing this, I whitened my teeth, put away my photo equipment and straightened the basement, hung some art, and ate a sandwich. I smoked three cigarettes and swapped pictures of things that say “cunt” with my friend Jen. Dinner will be Utah’s leftover fettuccini alfredo, carrots, and roasted Brussels sprouts after we finish our frozen mudslides.