I woke up again today, the familiar piercing ring of my alarm clock causing me to rise from my orderly bed sharply. As I continue my familiar routine all I can think of is the endless monotony of it all, every day is the same, wake up, get dressed, eat, leave, work, leave work, eat, sleep. I contemplate my schedule so thoroughly I start muttering the order to myself whilst I brush my teeth, causing a white glob of toothpaste to stain my shirt. I barely make an attempt to clean it off before leaving for work, already sitting in my car with a blank stare as I sit in silence. I being to wonder how I ever got here, moving from the very essence of uniqueness in my school days to the most generic man you could find in America. I arrive at work and my pondering is cut short, quickly replaced with a heavy workload that would surely require all of my attention, as if I had left these troubling thoughts in the car when I arrived. The rest followed the list, all just as standardly bland as usual until I readied myself to go to bed when I received a message that my father had passed from a heart attack. I barely reacted, instead laying my phone down next to my bed and choosing to drown my sorrows through dreams rather then face them. Sadly, there was no dream that night, just gentle sobbing staining my clean sheets. The next morning I awoke, and it was as if nothing happened, I went through my day as normal, as I always do. The same the next day, and again, and again, and again…
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,916 Literary Works • 673,736 Reviews
This is a nice little short. The tone is heavy and monotonous which is enhanced by the repetition in your prose like when the narrator repeats their schedule to themself. I also think the concept is relevant and compelling. Somethings aren't all that developed though, like when the narrator mentions how they used to be "the essence of uniqueness" without going into why or how that changed. Also, the ending, while interesting, felt a little rushed and didn't seem very emotionally realistic. Overall, it's a decently compelling and thought provoking piece.
First of all: I love this so much. The topic of how, for many people, nothing ever changes in their life, is one that so many people experience, wether you're a student tired of homework and classes, or a grown-up stuck in the same boring job for years. You're really good at describing these realistic experiences!
I noticed that you start almost all of the sentences with "I..." and then what the man does next. Generally, I'd give a tip to not start every sentence in this same way, but in this case, I feel like using these sentences reflects the man's dull life; how everything that's happening is so unintresting, and how everything is repeating everyday. So if that's what you were going for, it definitely succeeded.
A tip I would give you though, is to vary the length of the sentences a bit. All the sentences are quite long, and it can get a bit overwhelming for the reader when we get too much information out of one long sentence, or if the pacing becomes a bit weird if it's all squeezed in together. Using more short or even one-word sentences generally created a dramatic feel for the reader, and I understand why you would want to keep this one as undramatic as possible (as I mentioned before, to show the man's boring life, and to kind of create a certain vibe for the reader), however, using just a little bit of variation in the sentence length in the right places would make the story a little more relieveing to read, while still keeping that sensation of repetition (again, if that was what you were going for).
These are just small things though. I loved reading this, the topic of how nothing ever changes really inspired me to write something of my own! This was a good read.
The monotony is established within the first sentence, and then, quite fittingly, I suppose, it repeats itself.
In theory, the father's death should be the catalyst, some moment when the protagonist’s carefully maintained emotional vacuum ruptures. A man loses his father and reacts with… bedtime. The story insists he is devastated with the nighttime sobbing, yet the emotional logic is never explored and merely stated. He wakes the next day identical to the last because he seems unwilling to ask what such grief does to a person.
All this needs is that first step toward something, anything, beyond the waking, dressing, eating, working, sleeping, and other miscellaneous "life" things. If the goal is to show a man dissolving into cyclical nonexistence, then the story should commit to that thematically rather than structurally. Why is everything so bleak? What is the point? Outside of the obvious commentary to be made...
I really like this. This left me feeling deeply unsettled and genuinely sad. When I first began reading this, I just thought that maybe something happy would happen, but when I read that the persons dad died it lowkey exceeded my expectations. It just made me like the story more. I like how you keep the story flat in contrast to the boring persons life. ( I can't really explain it.) I feel a real pang of pity for this man who is so disconnected from his own existence that he can't even properly grieve his father's death. It's heartbreaking. Keep it up