when did being alive become a project?

Apparently there’s a correct way to wake up, eat breakfast, go for a walk, breathe, sleep, stand and, rather worryingly, sit down. We’ve become very good at finding things to improve. Our routines, our health, our work, our bodies, our habits, our morning sunlight. Everything can be optimized, tracked, fixed or, more recently, maxxed. And individually, quite a lot of that advice is probably useful. Taken together, though, it does begin to suggest that being a person is a project we’re somehow falling behind on. So I’ve been thinking about self-improvement, ambition, “good enough,” and our slightly deranged ability to turn almost anything enjoyable into another area for personal development. Because I don’t want to stop wanting things or getting better at them. I’d just like ambition to have some jurisdiction, it doesn’t also need breakfast. There has to be room for parts of a life that remain completely unimpressive. An afternoon that achieves nothing, a friendship with no measurable outcomes. Watching The Parent Trap in the middle of the day and emerging exactly as hydrated, informed and personally developed as you were before. Otherwise there’s a fairly strange possibility: you could become extremely good at improving your life and accidentally become extremely good at getting missing it. —————— Get my Writing Systems & Storytelling Tools ✨ → https://www.theashfiles.com —————— Essay Collections — https://bit.ly/4onmQ3I —————— TikTok - https://bit.ly/4dakJdD Substack - https://bit.ly/3EbaRnE Website - https://www.theashfiles.com Freewrite Typewriter - https://bit.ly/3W29yfO [affiliate link] Work with Me — hello@theashfiles.com ABOUT ME: Hi! 🙋🏼‍♀️ I’m Ash – a writer, content creator, and movie lover with a penchant for the nostalgic. I spend more time talking to my dog than actual humans, and when I’m not arguing with fictional characters, my days are spent writing endless drafts or down movie-related rabbit holes. In this little corner of the internet, I share my love for storytelling, the ups and downs of my creative process, and the sometimes ridiculous, often relatable moments that come with being a 30-something and not having it all figured out.