Greetings, fellow humans. It’s great to be back after a short winter nap; I firmly believe my time away is not far off from the actual length of winter in Riverside. Last month (or last year if you lean dramatic) we wrapped up four more seasons of creative poking and prodding—making sounds out of jars, turning sidewalks into galleries, and generally finding meaning where none was promised. If you participated in even one of those exercises, thank you. I’m excited to begin 2026 with you.
Which brings us to this week’s creative nudge: an old calendar. In my house, calendars are not generic objects. Every year, my wife makes me a custom calendar using photos from the year before: trips we took, our pets doing pet things, our daughter growing faster than seems polite. Each January, I unwrap a brand-new artifact of recent memory… and immediately face the quiet, unresolved problem of what to do with last year’s version of my life.
I know exactly how to recycle my Christmas tree. Riverside Public Works has that dialed in. Drag it to the curb, remove the tinsel, feel virtuous. Right now, I’m looking out my window where I write this column and spy my neighbors ten foot tree sticking out of the black solid waste bin…one of the few options not allowed in this town. Yes, the struggle is real.
But the old calendar? I don’t know where that goes. As my alter ego “Mylar” I make art out of trash to avoid this very dilemma! Is it paper recycling? Mixed media? Emotional waste? Does it belong in the blue bin, the black one, or carefully buried in the back of a desk drawer?
Calendars are absurd objects when you think about them. We print time. We hang it on the wall. We draw boxes around our lives and label a bunch of them “Monday.” We tell our future selves where to go and what to do when they get there. We decorate the whole operation with palm trees, kittens, national parks, or—if you’re lucky—evidence that you once went outside and did something memorable. Then, after twelve months of glancing at it while microwaving leftovers, we throw it away and start over.
This week, instead of disposing of your expired calendar like contraband, I invite you to use it as art. Treat it like the absurd artifact it is and spend a few minutes turning time already lived into something newly useful. I invite you to give yourself the gift of several minutes of creative contemplation, using one or more of these nudges:
1. Time is a Construct: Cut out images, numbers, or entire months and rearrange them into a new composition. Put August after January. Stack all the Wednesdays together and see how that fits your work schedule. Time might be fake—lean into it.
2. Rip It Good: Tear pages slowly. Tear them angrily or gleefully or guiltily. Tear one carefully like you’re opening a letter from a rich relative sending you cash. Notice how different kinds of paper resist you or surrender without a fight. Fold April, the cruelest month, it into an airplane and throw it out an open door.
3. Hear Yea[r]: Flip pages fast. Crumple one. Drop another on the floor. Record the sounds and title the piece something ambitious like Fiscal Year or Twelve Attempts.
4. Days of Da Scent: Smell the paper. Be honest. Does it smell like the kitchen, wet dog, sunscreen, or the inside of a car parked too long on street sweeper day? Write a few lines about where this calendar lived and what kind of year it absorbed.
5. Time to Refuel: Use your calendar as a plate or placemat. Eat a food item fitting for the month or day. A turkey leg atop November. A taco on any given Tuesday. Something aggressively seasonal. Write a paragraph that begins: This year, I want time to taste like…
Your old calendar is proof that you survived another year in a world that measures everything but understands very little. It’s a record of intention colliding with reality—meetings that mattered briefly, days that vanished entirely, moments that turned out to be bigger than the square they were assigned.
Welcome to 2026. Don’t rush to organize it. Take a few minutes. Make something strange. Dispose of time responsibly—or at least creatively.
This column was written with the help of ChatGPT 5.2, used as a creative collaborator in my ongoing exploration of how humans can stay human in an era of unprecedented technological change.
