6.30.25: MemoryFilter™
Tired of your ex ruining your playlist? MemoryFilter™ syncs to your neural cloud and removes associations from songs, places, faces, anything. Now your song is just a song. The breakup is gone, but so is the thrill. Soon, people were overusing it—scrubbing everything. Fewer memories, fewer triggers. One guy deleted every sadness ever. He stopped recognizing empathy. A woman erased pain, then forgot her own children. Now the company sells a disclaimer: “Emotions are not bugs. They’re features.” But sales keep climbing. People would rather feel nothing than feel anything bad. In the end, forgetting is the most addictive drug.
6.29.25: Canceling Plans
You know what nobody talks about? The quiet relief of canceling plans. Not because you hate your friends, but because the idea of getting dressed, commuting, smiling for two hours, and spending money feels exhausting. I used to feel guilty about it. Now I think it's a form of self-preservation. Sometimes your body says no before your brain does. The dopamine hit from a canceled event and a quiet evening alone with a good playlist and zero responsibilities? That’s a luxury. If your soul breathes deeper when you stay in, that’s probably the choice you should make more often.
6.28.25: Try Harder
Ellie found the tooth under her pillow, but no money. Just a note: “Nice try.” Confused, she asked her mom, who laughed. “Probably your brother.” But that night, another tooth appeared. Then three more. Not hers. Not human. More notes: “Try harder.” “We’re waiting.” Ellie stopped sleeping. Her pillow bulged. X-rays showed nothing. Dentists shrugged. But she knew. The sixth night, she didn’t check. She burned the pillow. Moved. Changed beds. New city. Still, the note found her: “You can’t quit now. You’re part of the exchange.” This time, she left it under the bed. Just in case.
6.27.25: “GET MY PHONE!”
I don’t understand people who look at a beautiful view and immediately pull out their phone. I get wanting a photo, but it’s like they’re trying to own the moment instead of just living in it. You can’t capture awe in pixels. Some of the most unforgettable sunsets I’ve seen were never photographed, and that makes them feel even more mine. I’ll remember the smell of the ocean and the way the light hit the water, not how many likes the photo got. The best moments in life aren’t meant to be documented. They’re meant to be felt.
6.26.25: BorrowTime™
BorrowTime™ lets you rent extra hours from people wasting theirs. Some gamer in Ohio trades three unused Sunday hours for crypto, and you use them to prep for your deadline. Everyone wins—except ethics. Turns out, time’s not neutral. You start dreaming in other people’s thoughts. A chef’s anxiety. A widow’s grief. One guy saw his own death while using twelve borrowed hours in a row. Still, productivity boomed. Nations thrived. And when it all collapsed, no one had time to fix it. Literally. The servers shut down at midnight. Permanently. Funny how quickly eternity gets rationed.
6.25.25: Accomplishment
There’s a moment after you finish something big—a project, a pitch, a goal—and all you feel is… nothing. No fireworks. No applause. Just stillness. Maybe relief. Maybe emptiness. You expected pride. Instead, you’re already thinking about what’s next. It’s like you don’t know how to celebrate wins anymore. Everything’s a checkpoint. Not an ending. You downplay your success because you’re afraid of looking satisfied. But you earned this. You built it. You pushed through the doubt. Maybe it’s okay to sit in the win for a minute. Maybe that’s what growth actually looks like—pausing before the next climb.
6.24.25: Breaking The Body
You don’t realize how much your body holds until it breaks. A shoulder tweak, a stiff neck, a strange ache that wasn’t there yesterday. You ignore it. Power through. Eventually, your body says no. You stretch more. Sleep more. Eat greens. You try healing like it’s a checklist. But rest isn’t passive. It’s work too. You start listening. Noticing. How posture reflects mood. How stillness reveals tension. You stop treating your body like a machine. It’s not an obstacle. It’s your only home. You don’t need to optimize it. Just respect it. That’s the shift. Less punishment. More partnership.
6.23.25: Real Silence
Being online all day makes you forget what real silence feels like. Not background-music silence. Actual quiet. No notifications. No tabs. No algorithm trying to sell you something. You crave stillness but you’re scared of it too. What happens when it’s just you and your thoughts? No buffer. No scroll. You used to enjoy books. Walks. Now you check your phone before checking your pulse. You joke about digital detoxes but can’t go one hour without checking messages. You miss boredom. You miss attention span. You miss reality. But hey, at least you know it. That’s step one. Maybe.
6.22.25: Automatic Sleep
Sleep used to be automatic. Now it’s an achievement. You try melatonin, magnesium, herbal teas with names like “Moon Calm.” Still, your brain runs laps at 2:47 AM. You replay conversations from 2015. You imagine arguments you’ll never have. You rewrite your resume, plan your future, question your past. Then you check the time—again. Every minute you’re awake becomes pressure. You Google “how to sleep fast.” That doesn’t help. You try meditating but start worrying about your posture. Eventually, you pass out from exhaustion, not peace. Wake up tired. Start again. The cycle continues. The pillow never judges. It just waits.
6.21.25: Adult Friendships
Friendships in adulthood are weird. Everyone’s busy. Everyone’s tired. You text in bursts, reply three days late, and call it “keeping in touch.” Plans get pushed. Hangouts get rare. But the real ones stay. You can go months without speaking and still pick up like nothing changed. No guilt. No small talk. Just presence. That’s the gold. Not the daily updates, but the solid core beneath the silence. You start valuing the ones who make you feel lighter. Not hyped—just understood. The ones who let you be messy, unfiltered, unproductive. If you’ve got even one of those, you’re rich.
6.20.25: Gym Life
You start going to the gym “just to be healthy.” Then it becomes more. The reps, the rhythm, the ritual. You start chasing numbers. Five more pounds. One more set. PRs become therapy. The soreness feels earned. It’s one of the few places where effort equals progress. There’s no pretending. You lift it or you don’t. You show up or you don’t. You stop caring how you look. You care how you feel—strong, focused, present. Outside the gym, everything’s blurry. In here, it’s simple. Just you and the weight. You’re not training for aesthetics. You’re training for sanity. And that’s enough.
6.19.25: Money Equals Silence
Money used to mean survival. Now it means silence. Peace. Options. You don’t want yachts. You want clean spreadsheets, passive income, rent paid early. You want to stop checking your bank app before buying toothpaste. You calculate savings like it’s a puzzle. Twenty percent here. Emergency fund there. You wonder if it’s enough. If it’s ever enough. People say money doesn’t buy happiness. But they’re usually the ones who have it. You don’t want luxury. You want leverage. Freedom to say no. Freedom to leave. You’re not greedy. You’re just tired of surviving. Wealth isn’t the goal. Autonomy is.
6.18.25: Instagram Wormhole
You open Instagram “just for a second.” Thirty minutes vanish. Your thumb scrolls automatically—tanned faces, rented cars, fake hustle, Bali again. Everyone’s life looks cinematic. Yours feels paused. You know it’s curated. You still fall for it. You start comparing. Their abs. Their trips. Their milestones. Your brain goes quiet, but not the good kind. You close the app and feel worse. The dopamine hits aren’t hitting. The algorithm isn’t feeding. It’s feeding on you. So you delete it—for the third time this year. You last a week. Then you’re back. We all are. Nobody wins. Especially not the scroll.
6.17.25: ADHD
ADHD is like waking up inside a browser with 37 tabs open, two of them playing music you can’t find. You start five tasks and finish none. Deadlines feel like background noise until they’re on fire. People think it’s forgetfulness. It’s not. It’s too much remembering at once. You overthink, then underperform. You’re exhausted from doing nothing but thinking everything. Still, you find your rhythms. Little tricks. Noise-canceling headphones, Pomodoro timers, to-do lists you mostly ignore. Some days, you crush it. Other days, survival is the win. You don’t want perfection. Just peace. Just one tab at a time.
6.16.25: Thoughts on Travel
At first, travel felt like freedom. New cities, new foods, new versions of you. But after a while, you stop unpacking. You forget what country you’re in. You’re always charging something—your phone, your laptop, your social battery. You say yes to everything because you might never come back. But your body’s tired. Your brain’s full. You miss your pillow. You miss silence. You start dreaming about routine, stability, clean laundry that isn’t humid. No one posts about this part. The fatigue. The float. You’ll recover. But next time, maybe slower. Maybe with roots. Not everything has to be a highlight reel.
6.15.25: Burnout Is Real
Burnout doesn’t arrive with sirens. It creeps. You wake up tired, ignore it. Miss a deadline, brush it off. Soon you’re canceling plans and forgetting birthdays. You call it a rough week, then a rough month. Eventually, you’re watching your life from the back row—detached, distracted, weirdly numb. Friends ask how you’re doing. You say “busy.” What you mean is: “barely.” But busy sounds better. So you keep going, hoping a day off will fix it. It won’t. Not if your worth is measured in output. Not if rest feels like failure. You’re not lazy. You’re exhausted. There’s a difference.
6.14.25: Remote Work
Remote work feels like a cheat code until your days blur into soft deadlines and blinking cursors. You wake up late, respond to messages in half-sentences, and eat meals standing up. You forget what day it is. Sometimes you forget your own voice. There’s freedom here, yeah—but it comes with isolation. The kind that sneaks up in the middle of a spreadsheet. You tell yourself you’re lucky. And you are. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You miss the stupid coffee breaks. The shared eye-rolls. Some part of you wants chaos again. The rest just wants another coffee.
6.13.25: The Deadlifter
There’s a guy at the gym who deadlifts like he’s summoning spirits. Screams, chalk cloud, dramatic rest between sets. Me? I stretch like I’m 80, then do three cautious sets of bench press while making a deal with gravity not to kill me. Still, I show up. Day after day. No PRs, no fanfare. Just sweat and a little less brain fog. Sometimes I think that’s enough. Not because I’m making gains—but because I’m still choosing to move when I could just rot. Progress isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just not quitting. Sometimes it’s just showing up when it’s hard.
6.12.25: Too Quiet
Chiang Mai’s quiet tonight. Street dogs asleep, motorbikes off-duty. The air smells like wet pavement and fried garlic. I pass a 7-Eleven with fluorescent lights that hum like a warning. Inside, a teenage couple is fighting in whispers over which ramen to buy. I grab a toastie, nod at the cashier, and step back into the mist. The city doesn’t rush me. No one here does. That’s the trick: time moves different when no one’s watching. I take the long way home, barefoot and unbothered. The toastie’s gone before I hit the elevator. Life feels weird. But weird feels like progress.
6.11.25: The Last Bookstore
The last bookstore closed yesterday. People barely noticed. The building's being turned into a vape bar or maybe a cryo-lounge — no one’s sure. I stood out front for a while, watching them carry out boxes. Not just books, but shelves, signs, that little wooden ladder on wheels. Gone. I remembered the smell of old pages, the quiet clicks of people browsing. Algorithms don’t smell like anything. They don’t surprise you. They just feed what you already like. Bookstores were unpredictable. You went in looking for nothing and left with something that changed you. Now we just scroll. And scroll. And scroll.