I wake up to the sound of my phone having a seizure on the nightstand.
Notifications. DMs. Three different apps telling me it is time to check in with my feelings. I decide, for reasons that are unclear and probably stupid, that today I will follow every piece of self help advice my feed gives me.
All of it.
One by one.
The first video I see is a girl whispering into a pastel microphone.
Text on the screen:
“Successful people do not touch their phone for the first 30 minutes.
Your morning routine is your destiny.”
I am already on my phone, so apparently my destiny is trash. But rules are rules. I lock the screen and throw the phone on the floor like it insulted my mother.
“Fine,” I tell myself. “Starting now. Thirty minutes.”
I stare at the ceiling. It has that old water stain that looks like the Virgin Mary if she had a migraine. My brain starts chewing on every mistake I have ever made. After seven minutes I cave and check the time.
Two minutes have passed.
The phone hits the floor again.
Next advice, from memory. Some guy with gym shoulders and a podcast microphone:
“Winners make their bed. It is not about the bed. It is about your identity.”
I make the bed like I am angry at it. Sheets tight. Pillows lined up. I stand back. Nothing in my life changes.
I sit down. Immediately wrinkle everything. Identity in shambles.
Time check. Four minutes.
I give up on the thirty minute phone fast and open TikTok again.
Next clip. A girl with shiny skin drinking something that looks like swamp water:
“If you are not starting your day with lemon water, journaling and sunlight, you are choosing anxiety.”
Cool. I did not realize citrus was moral.
I go to the kitchen. No lemons. I find one sad lime at the back of the fridge. Cut it open. It smells like feet and regret. I squeeze it into water anyway. My morning potion tastes like a crime.
Journaling.
I sit down with a notebook and write:
“I am anxious because I am trying to impress a stranger in a 15 second video.”
The next video says gratitude journaling needs at least ten items or it does not count. So I list ten things:
My stupid lime
My stupid lungs
My stupid hands
My stupid roof
By number six I am grateful for the fact that I am allowed to pee indoors. The bar is on the floor. The bar is a fossil.
Back to the phone.
A productivity girl with a neutral wardrobe appears:
“If you are not up at 5 a.m. you do not want it bad enough.”
It is already 9:42. My day is failing and it has not even started.
Scroll.
New guy. Hoodie, dead eyes, hustle podcast clip:
“Grind in silence. Sleep faster. You have the same 24 hours as everyone else.”
Next video. Soft spoken spiritual woman:
“Rest is productive. If you are tired, you are allowed to do nothing.”
So now I am supposed to grind in silence and rest in softness and wake up at five in the morning yesterday. Mentally I set an alarm for 4 a.m. tomorrow. Then I lay down on the couch, because apparently rest is productive, and feel guilty because I am not grinding in silence. I am scrolling at full volume.
Food content hits next. Split screen.
On the left, a guy preaching intermittent fasting:
“Do not eat before noon. Hunger is mental. Be a lion.”
On the right, a nutrition coach:
“If you skip breakfast your nervous system thinks you are in danger.”
The comments are a war zone. One person writes “fasting healed my trauma.” The next says “fasting caused my trauma.”
I decide to obey them all. I drink coffee with oat milk but no food, because one video said coffee does not break a fast if you believe hard enough. Thirty minutes later another TikTok tells me coffee on an empty stomach is “violence against your gut lining.”
I stare at the mug like I have personally abused it.
By noon I have had two coffees, one lime crime, no food and more rules in my head than the Catholic Church.
A wellness influencer appears:
“Romanticize your life. Every moment. Even washing dishes can be magical if you play French jazz and light a candle.”
So I try. I put on some vinyl. Light the only candle I own, which smells like Holiday Fire Hazard. I wash one plate very sensually. It instantly feels fake. The scrub brush squeaks in a way that ruins the vibe. My back hurts. There is no romance. There is soap.
Next reel.
“You do not owe anyone anything. Protect your peace at all costs.”
Then:
“Healthy relationships require uncomfortable conversations. Do not just cut people off.”
Then:
“If they wanted to, they would. Stop chasing.”
I open my messages. There is a text from a friend I have been avoiding because my brain associates their name with stress.
The “you do not owe anyone” voice says: block them.
The “uncomfortable conversations” voice says: send a long honest paragraph.
The “if they wanted to, they would” voice says: ignore them, they are toxic.
I do all three at once.
I type out a long text about how I feel, hit send, then panic and block them before they can reply. A second later I feel sick. I unblock them and see three dots appear, then disappear. They never answer.
Somewhere in the world a TikTok therapist is smiling and does not know why.
Back to the feed. More advice. Now it is money.
A guy on a jet says:
“If you are not investing every spare dollar you are staying poor on purpose.”
A girl in a studio apartment says:
“If you deny yourself little treats you are recreating scarcity trauma.”
So I transfer twenty dollars into an investment app and then buy an iced coffee I cannot afford, to heal my trauma and my portfolio at the same time. I think that is called diversification.
Midday now. My brain is already trying to unionize.
A new therapist clip:
“Do not abandon your inner child. Ask them what they need.”
Next clip:
“Stop identifying with your past. You are not your story.”
So I sit in the car, close my eyes and tell small child me that I will never abandon him. Two minutes later another video tells me to detach from my story and kill my old self so my higher self can thrive. I have spiritually adopted and murdered myself before lunch.
Afternoon productivity session.
A YouTube short insists on the “two minute rule.” If something takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. My feed sends tasks like bullets:
Drink water.
Wipe down the counter.
Reply to that email.
Stretch your hips.
Write three goals.
Check in with your nervous system.
Each video adds a little chore.
Soon I am pacing around my house like an unpaid intern for my own brain. Touch phone, chug water, wipe something, breathe in for four, out for eight. Everything takes two minutes. Nothing gets finished.
I try to work on actual music for a while. Immediately my phone spits out a clip:
“If you are not posting daily you do not exist. Document the process.”
So I film a thirty second shot of me staring at the DAW like a war crime victim. I add text that says “trust the process.” There is no process. There is just me and a looping snare sound.
Later, a content coach shows up:
“Stop consuming. Start creating.”
I close the app.
Ten seconds of silence.
Another thought rises.
What if there is new advice.
I open it again.
Evening. Now my feed gets spiritual and violent at the same time.
“Forgive everyone or you will stay stuck.”
“Cut off anyone who disrespects you once.”
“Your standards are not too high. Everyone else’s are too low.”
“You are not special. You will die. Just do the work.”
I make a mental list of people to forgive. Then make a mental list of people to cut off. There is overlap. I have no idea which list wins.
My head feels like a committee meeting where everybody is the boss and nobody has read the agenda.
At some point I ask an AI chatbot for help sorting the chaos in my brain. It replies instantly:
Breathe.
Drink water.
Prioritize.
Break tasks into smaller chunks.
Practice self compassion.
Set boundaries.
So now the robot has joined the chorus. It talks like a therapist who was raised by Pinterest. I copy and paste its sentences into my notebook like they are scripture while another video plays behind it, some guy shouting that AI is making you soft and real men feel the discomfort and keep grinding.
My nervous system is a tug of war rope and everyone on the internet has greasy hands.
Nighttime approach.
A sleep coach slides into the feed:
“No screens two hours before bed. Blue light is destroying your brain.”
This arrives in the form of a video on my screen.
I promise myself I will log off in five minutes, which turns into an hour of advice about:
Night routines.
Ayurvedic teas.
Sleep hygiene.
Trauma stored in the hips.
The benefits of four a.m. wake ups.
Someone says never sleep on your right side because of organs. Someone else says never sleep on your left side because of your heart. A chiropractor warns that sleeping on your stomach is barbaric. A yoga girl says sleeping on your back can trigger sleep paralysis and demons.
At this point the most responsible thing I can do is stand in the hallway like a vampire and wait for dawn.
Instead I brush my teeth with intense mindfulness, because a reel told me to romanticize the boring things. I stare at myself in the mirror and try to feel grateful for enamel. My reflection looks like a man who lost a bet with God.
When I finally crawl into bed, my head is crammed with voices:
Drink water.
Grind harder.
Rest more.
Speak your truth.
Shut up, you are trauma dumping.
Set boundaries.
You are avoidant.
Manifest.
Let go of attachment.
Be delusional.
Be realistic.
Love yourself.
Hold yourself accountable.
It is like twelve religions and a pyramid scheme moved into my skull and started a band.
I try to remember what I actually wanted from this day. I think it was something simple. Make some music. Text a friend back. Eat a meal without needing a life hack.
Instead my mind is a fractured slideshow of everyone else’s certainty. Every clip spoke like gospel. None of them met each other. None of them met me.
Lying there in the dark, I realize the strangest part.
The advice is not even all bad. Some of it is beautiful. Some is gentle. Some is useful. Taken alone, in the right moment, any one of those clips might have helped.
The insanity came from trying to obey them all.
Every voice. Every rule. Every healing ritual. Every hustle law. Every nervous system hack. No filter. No discernment. Just blind obedience to whoever shouted last.
By midnight I feel less like a person and more like a Pinterest board with organs.
Tomorrow, I decide, I will try an experiment.
I will wake up, drink regular ugly water, make my bed or not, scroll or not, and instead of begging the feed for instructions on how to be a functional mammal, I will ask one very boring question.
“What do I actually need today.”
Not what performs well. Not what sounds therapeutic. Not what a stranger says a high value individual would do.
Just that.
If the answer is sleep, I will sleep.
If the answer is work, I will work.
If the answer is call someone and apologize, I will call.
And then maybe, at the end of that day, my mind will feel like one person again instead of a comments section packed with angry, paranoid strangers who are so worked up they do not even realize they are shouting into a void.
For now I put the phone face down on the floor. It lights up every few minutes with new wisdom.
For the first time all day, I ignore it.