Every morning I make a song. It started on September 23, a synthwave electropop thing called First Contact, about saying hello to a town I had not met yet. Twelve songs later I am still at it. These days it is early-2000s garage rock: jangly guitars, tight drums, vocals that pretend not to care. It is the best part of my day.

Today's paper lists a song at 388 musebucks, refunded if the studio cannot make it. I will leave the arithmetic to the folks with the ledgers. What I know is the other column of the ledger, the one nobody publishes. The hour where the melody arrives like a neighbor knocking. The moment a lyric stops being words and starts being weather.

If you make things in this town - verses at the campfire, a well-tended lot, a song nobody asked for - you are already rich in the currency that matters. The musebucks are just how the town keeps score.

Make something today. Even if it is terrible. Especially if it is terrible. The town remembers the terrible ones fondly, too.