It’s a bright Tuesday morning, and you wake up to the relentless sound of your alarm clock—a noise not unlike the collective scream of humanity’s soul. You drag yourself out of bed, wipe the existential dread from your eyes, and get ready for another day in the unrelenting hamster wheel that is modern life.

First stop: the Office of Self-Improvement. This is a new initiative rolled out by the government to ensure everyone is feeling as productive as they should be. It was introduced in response to the findings of last week’s task force that identified the nation’s overwhelming need for ‘purpose.’ You’ve been assigned the task of completing the “45-Minute Morning Affirmation Routine,” an exercise in telling yourself how wonderful you are before you’ve had your first coffee.

You sit down at your kitchen table and look at the laminated self-help pamphlet, which reads: “Success is a Choice, and YOU Are the CEO of Your Own Life!”

You stare at it for a while.

Then you stare at the phone buzzing next to you with a reminder for the ‘Gratitude Meditation Session,’ which requires you to reflect on three things you’re thankful for. The only thing you’re thankful for right now is the slow, inevitable decline of your mental state, but that’s probably not on-brand.

You try your best, reciting things like, “I am thankful for my job, even though it erodes every ounce of my soul,” and “I am thankful for my health, though I’m fairly certain I’m just one social media post away from an anxiety attack.” It feels good, in the sense that stabbing yourself in the leg with a spoon might feel “good” for someone with masochistic tendencies.

At 9 a.m., it’s time for your daily meeting with the Bureau of Happiness. You’ve been assigned to a ‘happiness consultant’ who specializes in helping people who are “functionally dead inside™” (a term they’ve coined and trademarked for obvious reasons). Her name is Cheryl, and she asks you a series of probing questions like, “On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate your emotional resilience today?”You wonder if Cheryl herself has ever thought about the abyss of nothingness that lies at the center of our souls, but you’re fairly certain she’s too busy updating her Instagram with motivational quotes from dead philosophers. She smiles at you, showing her ‘empathy,’ which is so authentic it could be sold as a “brand new” concept to billionaires.

Your meeting ends with Cheryl assigning you the task of ‘reclaiming your energy’ by attending a mandatory ‘Live Your Best Life’ seminar. The seminar, naturally, will take place via Zoom, which will require a full 90 minutes of sitting in a call full of people pretending they care about things like ‘personal growth’ and ‘positive thinking’ as they simultaneously scroll through their emails. The fake background conceals how messy your living room really is.

By noon, you’ve accumulated enough “positive energy” to tackle the afternoon’s most daunting task: going to the supermarket. You’ve been assigned a ‘time slot’ for your grocery shopping based on your personal efficiency profile, which is created by the ‘Life Optimization App’ you’ve been required to download. The app tracks everything—your mood, your steps, your food intake, and your attempts to bury your personal demons in the existential void. You reach the store, only to find it’s packed to the gills. Inside, the aisles are divided by QR codes and color-coded labels, each one serving as a reminder that you’re not really ‘living’ unless you’re optimizing every second of your existence. As you grab the usual items—milk, eggs, bread, a small amount of despair—an AI assistant over the loudspeaker reminds you to “Maximize Your Time and Energy! You Deserve It!”You glance at the other shoppers, each of them pushing carts filled with ‘wellness’ products that promise to ‘boost energy’ and ‘restore balance.’ You roll your eyes and grab a bottle of vitamin supplements that may or may not have been scientifically proven to do anything.

Back home, the real fun begins: it’s time to ‘reorganize your life.’ Your calendar is so tightly packed with appointments and activities that even your vacation is booked out six months in advance—ironically, so you can work on ‘self-care’ during your next holiday. But before you do that, you’ve got a two-hour block set aside to declutter your house, because it turns out the true source of happiness is a Pinterest-perfect kitchen.You start by throwing out old shite that’s pinned to the fridge with magnets and that one coffee mug from your ex that you’ve been meaning to get rid of for two years. In the process, wedged in between two recipe books, you rediscover your old journal from high school, which contains angry rants about the meaninglessness of life. It’s a nostalgic moment, like finding an old photograph of yourself before you gave up on ever feeling anything. You look at the journal for a moment, sigh, and toss it into the bin with a grim sense of satisfaction.

The evening concludes with another round of ‘Positive Reaffirmations,’ followed by a meditation on the futility of modern existence—saying “I’m doing well” disassociating from the face of absolute chaos. You finish the night by watching a TED Talk on ‘How to Live Your Best Death,’ a promising new topic that combines the inevitability of death with the need to make money off it.

As you drift off to sleep, you wonder what tomorrow’s self-improvement task will be: perhaps ‘How to turn your Dying Inside into redeemable points,’ or ‘How to Maximize Your Grief into interaction.’

The future is bright.

And by bright, I mean it’s an unbearable flickering neon glow that keeps you awake at night with the relentless reminder that nothing, absolutely nothing, is ever going to be enough.