You wake up at the sound of the alarm. It may have been ringing for a while now. You reach for your phone, hit the snooze button and bury your head underneath the pillow. Five more minutes. You think. It rings again. The damn thing. May have forgotten to turn off the snooze settings. You throw the pillow out of your face. Open your eyes. I’m not going to get any sleep now. You’re awake. Really awake now. You sit up and lean against the headboard of your bed. Rub your eyes and reach for your phone once again. The Facebook app says you have 15 notifications. Probably just random updates about a friend vacationing or some such. You log in anyway. You click the notification button. You were right. Nothing unusual. Nothing interesting. You scroll through anyway. You log out fifteen minutes later. Time to get out of bed. You see the Instagram icon this time. So you tap. The feeds pour in. Same updates. Same pictures. That friend got married. Another had a kid. You’ve seen this earlier when scrolling through Facebook. Facebook’s algorithm update was definitely for the worse. It’s just irrelevant now. There are new memes on Instagram. Everything is funny. From the accounts that aren’t on Facebook. Some are repetitive. But still funny. You post a picture of the trip you took last weekend. There’s a red dot under the heart sign at the bottom right of your screen. Someone lost weight. Oh, wait. There’s an app for yoga. There’s another that lets you work out at home. There’s an app for a diet plan too. You need to shed some pounds. You sign up. For the curated diet plans. The Keto diet worked the last time but subscribing is pretty cheap too. Just like all the other apps that you have subscribed to. There’s one for music. One for the news. One for podcasts. One for guided meditation. There’s one for everything. Who keeps count anymore. You swipe out of Instagram and think. Now I really have to get out of bed. You do. Brush your teeth, wash your face and notice the pimple sprouting under the surface of your skin. You poke at it for some time. Then ignore it and get out.

You go to the kitchen and brew a cup of black coffee. Milk makes you bloat. Black coffee helps shed those pounds too. You heard someone say that one time. You sit on your chair and reach for your laptop this time. Log in to your email and open your inbox. There are more than a hundred unread emails. You only read the subject and delete the ones that ask you to buy something. Or tell you there’s a discount about something you absolutely do not need. You save the newsletters from the science journal you subscribed to. Nautilus. Interesting stuff. Every time. You don’t open them. When I have some time. You think. You had a lot of time in school. In college too. Now you have the past. You log in to Outlook to see if anything came up at work after you left. Nothing that needs your undivided attention. Nothing that can’t be managed until you get to work. You shut down your laptop. Finish your coffee and get into the shower. The warm water feels good against your skin. You stand under it for a minute and do nothing. There are no thoughts, just you and the water and how it feels when it touches your skin. You get out and put on your clothes in a rush. No breakfast. You will grab another cup of coffee on the way or maybe when you get to work. That will do just fine till lunch. There’s a lot of rush. It always takes you more than an hour. Taking an Uber to work every day is unreasonably expensive. Maybe you should get a car. You snap out of it.

You walk into the office. Say hi to your colleagues who made it before you. How could anyone get anywhere in such horrid traffic? You don’t say it out loud. You open your laptop once again. And take a seat. You’ve already read the emails earlier this morning. You have a report that’s due today. You need to work on it or be ready for the satire that awaits. It has taken the shape of a human. That’s your boss. It’s a love-hate relationship. Love for the money. Hate for everything that leads to it. Maybe that came out too strong. Life isn’t that bad. You can’t complain. And monotony isn’t a real problem. Just a point of view. A state of mind that you snap in and out of now and then. You live for the weekends. What else is there. It’s Monday. Let’s get some work done.

You get home. Tired from the day. Sometimes you get tired without a reason. That happens often. You try to look busy. Get through the day. Kill time. It’s tiring. You freshen up and order in dinner. You are in no mood to cook. Not after that shitty traffic. Maybe you’ll get some reading done before bed. Maybe try to write. You don’t. You watch something random. Something that doesn’t need too much attention. Something that doesn’t make your head hurt. Doesn’t make you think. The office. You start dozing off before finishing an episode. You turn off your laptop. Set the alarm on your phone. Keep it on your bedside table. You look at the person sleeping next to you. You don’t wake them. It’s too late to talk. Talking is exhausting. Tomorrow is another day. You think. Tomorrow.