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Last Wednesday at 8pm, I was sitting on the couch in my rental in Chaoyang, Beijing, staring at my phone. The recommendation feed showed me something related to Smart home made my a — I don’t remember why it appeared, but it did.

I didn’t want to click. But I knew I would eventually — not because I needed it, but because I needed the “look at it” gesture itself.

I talked about Smart home made my apartment quieter, not less lonely with a friend before. She works in operations at an internet company in Wangjing SOHO, routinely staying until 10pm. She said that every Sunday at 7pm, she feels a switch flip — eyes fixed on the window, brain full of next week’s todos. She can’t name it, but her chest feels tight.

I was in a similar state back then. Stuck in something I couldn’t articulate — not anxiety, not depression, just a kind of “I can still move but I don’t want to” exhaustion.

Eventually I went to see a therapist. She was a few years older than me, didn’t ask me to lie down or fill out scales. She asked one question: “When was the last time you felt alive?”

I sat there for a long time. I couldn’t answer. Thinking about the last year — occasional dinners with friends, occasional code that worked — I couldn’t recall that “I’m alive” feeling.

She didn’t respond. After a while she said: “If you want that feeling, you have to admit one thing first — the way you’re living right now, you didn’t choose it. You were pushed into it.”

That stung. I instinctively wanted to argue — how could I say I didn’t choose? I cook for myself after work, I don’t completely lie around on weekends. How is that “being pushed”?

But on the way home I thought about it for a long time. She meant something different — she meant all my effort was “reacting”: reacting to work, to rent, to family pressure, to Monday anxiety. I never left time or space for “how I want to live.”

Since then I’ve been doing one small thing: not working on Sunday evenings. I treat it as a deadline — after 5pm, the laptop closes, work chat goes silent. I do “useless” things: walk in the park, water the plants on the balcony, watch a movie I’ve been meaning to see.

It was hard at first. Closing the laptop triggered intense anxiety — a feeling that something wasn’t done, that I was wasting time. But after a few times I realized those 3 hours weren’t wasted at all — they gave me an anchor for the week: “I can choose not to work.”

I don’t have a standard answer about Smart home made my apartment quieter, not less lonely. I’m not going to say “just do this every day and you’ll be fine,” because I don’t believe that. I just want to say: if this is making you uncomfortable, it’s probably not laziness, and it’s not melodrama — it might be your body trying to tell you something.

You don’t have to make any decision right now. But if you want, try this weekend: keep Sunday evening for yourself. Not for any reason other than to remember: you’re not just living for Monday.