The Open Floor Plan

Optimizing your daily hours

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

I have found it easy, in 2021, to see multitudes of daily actions and interactions as problems to be solved. Loads of social media appears incorrigibly ‘as therapist,’ either as a quick fix towards a brighter future or as soothing content to rub aloe over the emotional void; here is a Twitter screenshot of why your ex dumped you / this Substack explains why you feel so unloveable in your mid-20s. Friends become therapists, Twitter becomes therapist, TikTok becomes therapist, mid-century modern is therapy, brunch is therapy, Restoration Hardware is therapy, and therapy is work. There is a lot of noise sans filter for the many ways we can consume content that feels therapeutic. Everywhere I look, I am being influenced by the lesson I should be learning in the passive and active moments of the day. See, clearly, I mean you must have been dense for years (so they say), this is how you should be doing it: sleep is to be performed without alcohol ever, without caffeine prior to 5 pm, without the rustling of a conjugal neighbor cautiously stacking limbs as one might in a sensual and slumbering game of lincoln logs. When you awake, it must be to the music of your state bird, the default Apple alarm being your Metro-pass down the escalator to Hell, and any cortisol injection (both accidental or purposeful) would accomplish the same terrible fate of turning you into…