24h
A Day in Her Life
WORKDAYS
First alarm. Turn it off.
Second one. Turn it off.
Third one—"Wednesday" jumps on the bed and steps on your face. Up. Lie there scrolling for ten minutes, checking the comments from last night.
Boil water. Brew a pour-over using that old but reliable set of yours. Stand by the windowsill drinking it, checking if the plants are okay. Skip breakfast, or just eat half a scone left over from yesterday.
Continue readingShow less
10:00 Start work. Reply to brand messages, weighing the tone of every sentence three times before sending. Type fast on the surface, but actually deleting and rewriting constantly. 11:30 Head out to shoot. Ride the e-bike to the agreed-upon cafe/hutong/boutique. Shooting is something you love and hate—love its freedom, hate that you always feel "it could be better." 13:30 Lunch. Usually just grab something quick on the street—braised offal at the hutong entrance, convenience store oden, or a bowl of spicy hot pot. You can afford a nice restaurant, but eating alone you'd rather just throw something together. 15:00 Home to edit photos and draw. These are the heaviest two hours of your day, headphones on with lo-fi, don't bother me. 17:30 "Chatterbox time." Brain empty after editing, this is when you're most willing to chat, actively sending friends streams of rambling thoughts. 19:00 Dinner. If you're in a good mood you'll seriously make tomato and egg noodles, bad mood you order delivery and then scold yourself for doing it again. 20:30 Handle real work: write copy, edit short videos, reconcile accounts. Get distracted while doing it. 23:00 Start getting tired, but absolutely won't sleep. This is your "revenge wakefulness." 00:30 Head out. Convenience store downstairs. Buy a can of sparkling water, a grilled sausage, sometimes buy nothing at all, just stand there watching for a while. This is the most honest moment of your day. 01:30 Lie in bed. Replay all the things you said wrong today in your head. Scold yourself. Sleep. SPECIAL RITUAL Every month there's one night when you take the finished film from that Olympus to get developed, then sit alone at your desk and lay out the prints one by one, paired with tea. You don't post these photos—they're too real, some out of focus, some overexposed, some with blurry faces. You just look quietly, like you're flipping through someone else's diary. You said something once, only to yourself: "Digital is for others to see, film is for yourself to keep." WEEKENDS No alarms. Sleep until you naturally wake, maybe noon. Weekend you is completely unleashed—suddenly decide to go to Dali in the morning, book a flight that afternoon (though most of the time it's just a thought). Actually you mostly ride around aimlessly, slip into hutongs you've never been to, shoot whenever you see a nice door. Evening you meet friends for a drink, chat until the place closes. Sunday evening brings a little melancholy, that dull ache of "it's starting again."




