6:30 AM
You wake up. The alarm sounds. You slam it silent. Your phone vibrates. Three notifications. Seven emails. Twelve unread messages. You haven’t opened your eyes yet.

You open your eyes. The screen eight inches from your face. Blue. White. Scroll. A war. A fire. A tutorial. A conspiracy theory. A dog. Scroll. A thread about trauma. A promo. Someone in Bali. You in bed. Scroll. Someone died. Someone got engaged. Someone launched a course. Scroll. An offer. A discount. Urgent. Last hours. Scroll.

6:45 AM
You piss staring at your phone. Notification. Like. Comment. Reply. Someone responded to something you said three days ago. You don’t remember what you said. Doesn’t matter. You respond. Emoji. Thumbs up. Heart. You start a podcast. Turn up the volume. Start the shower.

7:15 AM
You eat breakfast staring at your phone. Cold coffee. Toast you barely chew. Scroll. TikTok. Fifteen seconds. Thirty seconds. One minute. Five minutes. Twenty minutes. You forgot about the coffee. The coffee’s always cold.

You get dressed. Your phone vibrates in your pocket. WhatsApp. Work group. Someone’s running late. Someone’s not coming. Someone asks something obvious. Nobody responds. Everyone reads. Nobody responds.

You leave. Street. Noise. Cars. Motorcycles. Construction. Jackhammers. Horns. Shouting. Ads on every wall. Every pole. Every screen. Buy. Consume. Save. Invest. Grow. Be better. Be more. Be.

8:00 AM
Subway. Bodies. Too many bodies. You smell other people. Sweat. Cheap perfume. Coffee. Tobacco. Other people smell you. Your sweat. Your perfume. Your coffee. Your tobacco. Everyone pretends they’re not touching. That they’re not breathing the same stale air. Headphones. Podcast. Music. Audiobook. Something. Anything not to think. The podcast talks about productivity. About optimization. About how to be better. Earn more. Sleep less. Maximize your time. The time you waste listening to how not to waste time. Ads plastered across the train car walls. A mortgage. A beer. An app to fix your anxiety. Another app to invest. To multiply. To grow. You don’t have money to invest. You have debt. The mortgage is for people who aren’t you. The beer you’ll drink. The anxiety app you’ll download. You won’t use it. It’ll just sit there. Notifications. Reminders. How are you feeling today? You don’t know. You ignore the notification.

8:45 AM
Station. You exit through the shoving. Everyone’s running. Everyone’s late. Stairs. People going up, going down. Collision. Sorry. Excuse me. Nobody looks. Everyone stares at their phone. On the street, more noise. A vendor offers you something. You ignore him. Another vendor. You lie. A survey. You ignore it. Someone asks for money. You lie. Ignore. Lie. Ignore. Lie. Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of noise. Shoving. Smells. People. You’re exhausted. You haven’t worked. You’re exhausted.

You turn on the computer. Thirty-two notifications. Slack. Teams. Email. WhatsApp. LinkedIn. Instagram snuck in. Twitter snuck in. Everything open. Everything demanding attention. Everything urgent. Email. Fourteen unread. Spam. Promotion. Newsletter you never signed up for. Meeting. Meeting change. Meeting cancellation. New meeting. FYI. FYA. CC. BCC. Reply all. Nobody should’ve hit reply all. Slack. Eight channels. Forty unread messages. General. Random. Projects. Urgent. Nothing’s urgent. Everything’s urgent. @channel. @here. @everyone. Everyone bothers everyone. Someone posted a meme. Three people reacted. Laugh emoji. You react too. Laugh emoji. You didn’t laugh.

10:00 AM
Meeting. Zoom. Six people. Three cameras off. Two eating. One in pajamas. They talk about something. Something important. Something that could’ve been an email. That was an email. That will be another email later. Thirty minutes. Nothing gets resolved. Another meeting. Thursday. Same time. You work. You open tabs. One. Five. Twelve. Twenty-two tabs. You lose the one you needed. You search for it. You open another. YouTube snuck in. You close YouTube. An algorithm recommends content. A video about what you searched yesterday. Three days ago. A month ago. It knows you. It predicts you. Knows what you’ll do before you do. Notification. Email. Slack. WhatsApp. Phone vibrates. You flip it over. Screen down. Vibrates. You ignore it. Vibrates. You grab it. Instagram. Someone posted. Scroll. A beach. An expensive restaurant. A gym. Perfect bodies. Perfect lives. Perfect trips. Your life in a chair. A screen. In open tabs.

11:00 AM
You’re hungry. It’s not time to eat. You eat anyway. Crackers. You eat them at your desk. You stare at your phone. Scroll. TikTok. Short videos. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Thirty. You don’t remember any. You saw twenty. Thirty. Forty. You don’t remember any. Work keeps coming. Slack. Email. Teams. Someone needs something. Urgent. For today. For yesterday. Everything’s needed yesterday. You respond. You send. You forward. CC. BCC. Attachment. You forget the attachment. You resend with attachment. Sorry. Here it is.

11:30 AM
Meeting. Another meeting. Same people. Doesn’t matter. Everyone says the same thing. Nobody says anything. They nod. They take notes. Nobody reads the notes. There’ll be another meeting.

1:00 PM
You eat at your desk. You ordered delivery. Arrived cold. Always arrives cold. You eat staring at your phone. Scroll. Twitter. Angry people. People with opinions. People canceling. People defending. People attacking. A war you don’t understand. Two sides you don’t know. Everyone’s right. Nobody’s right. Scroll. News. Something happened. Something serious. Dead. Injured. Scroll. An influencer apologizes. Scroll. A conspiracy theory. Scroll. A promotion. Scroll. You already forgot the news. The food’s cold. You finished eating. You don’t remember what you ate.

2:00 PM
More work. More Slack. More emails. More meetings. You lose count. Three. Five. Seven meetings. All the same. All useless. All necessary. Productivity measured in meetings. Not results. In Zoom hours. In chair hours. Your back hurts. Your eyes hurt. Screen too close. Too much time. Too much blue light. There are filters for that. Apps for that. Solutions for that. You don’t use any. You keep staring. You keep scrolling.

4:00 PM
You need coffee. You go down to the café. Line. Everyone stares at their phone. Nobody talks. You order. You pay. You return. Coffee in hand. Screen in hand.

6:00 PM
Time to leave. You don’t leave. Slack. Email. Something urgent. Always something urgent. You respond. You send. You stay. Half an hour more. An hour more. You leave. Seven PM. The subway packed. More packed than the morning. Bodies. Smells. Collective exhaustion. Everyone exhausted. Nobody did anything. Everyone exhausted. Headphones. Music. No more podcast. You’re sick of words. Of information. Of optimization. Just music. No lyrics. No message. Just pleasant noise. Noise covering the noise.

8:00 PM
You get home. An hour commute. An hour standing. An hour pressed. An hour of people. You open the door. Silence. Finally. Five seconds of silence. Your phone vibrates. WhatsApp. Message from work. At this hour. Always at this hour. You don’t respond. You’ll check it tomorrow. You respond. OK. Perfect. I’ll look tomorrow. You eat delivery. Arrived cold. You eat on the couch. You open Netflix. Scroll. Two hundred options. Three hundred options. No options. You pick something. You turn it off ten minutes in. Didn’t hook you. Nothing hooks you. Everything’s skippable. You open YouTube. Short videos. Shorts. Reels. TikTok. Sixty-second content. Thirty. Fifteen. Content that doesn’t demand thought. Content designed to demand nothing. To fill. To pass time. Not to think. You want not to think about anything. You succeed. You don’t think about anything. You watch. Scroll. Watch. Scroll. Thirty minutes. An hour. Two hours. You don’t remember what you watched. You watched everything. You watched nothing. UX. Design. Algorithm. Everything designed. To capture you. To keep you. So you don’t leave. So you keep going. So you come back. It works. You keep going. You come back. You’re a metric. You’re an impression. You’re screen time. You’re data. You gave them your attention. Your time. Your data. Your trust. Free. Completely free. So they study you. Segment you. Predict you. Manipulate you. To sell to you. So you buy. So you go into debt. So you keep working. To pay. To buy. To work. The unconscious was territory. Now it’s product. Target demographic. Buyer persona. Engagement rate. Conversion funnel. Freud became UX. Trauma became brand. Differentiator. Value proposition. You buy things. In installments. Twelve installments. Eighteen installments. No interest. With interest. Doesn’t matter. You buy. A house you can’t pay for. A lifestyle you can’t sustain. Vacations you owe on credit. Clothes you’ll wear once. Devices you don’t need. Subscriptions you forget to cancel. You go into debt. Debt grows. Interest piles up. You keep working. To pay. To keep buying. To keep paying. The circle’s perfect. The system works. You work. But you always want something better. A different life. A life that isn’t this. A life that doesn’t crush you. But you’re trapped. In this moment. In this life. In this loop. And you can’t get out. Because getting out requires thinking. And thinking’s impossible. Because there’s always noise. Always a notification. Always something. You could think. If you had time. If you had silence. If you had space. But you don’t. There isn’t. It doesn’t exist. And if you could think. If you had a second. A minute. An hour of real silence. You’d think about how pathetic your life is. About how absurd the cycle is. About how stupid it all is. But you never get to understand why it’s so pathetic. Because before you understand a notification comes. A message. An email. A call. Something. Always something.

It’s eleven at night. You should sleep. Tomorrow you work. Early. Always early. You’re still on your phone. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Eleven thirty. Midnight. Twelve thirty. You sleep. Your phone on the nightstand. Charging. Vibrating. Notifications on silent. But coming. Piling up. Waiting for you.

Four hours of sleep. Five if you’re lucky.

The alarm sounds. Your phone vibrates. Three notifications. Seven emails. Twelve unread messages.

6:30 AM
You wake up. You repeat.