My Couch Ate Ambition

I did not choose the couch. The couch chose me.At thirty-seven, I was a person with plans. Italian fluency (the Duolingo owl still haunts my dreams). A gym membership (the treadmill has never seen my face). A novel (seventeen first pages, zero second chapters). Then I bought a beige sofa from a salesman named Gary, and my ambition disappeared-one crumb at a time.This is not a self-help book. It is a surrender document.My couch speaks in rumbles and hums. It has a gravitational pull stronger than physics. It whispers things like, "The remote is under the left cushion" and "You've done enough." My dining chair, bar stool, and a footstool in a garish floral pattern staged an intervention. My friend Marcus tried to exorcise the couch with sage and Gregorian chants. He fell asleep. The couch won.Part parable, part confession, part furniture-based stand-up routine, My Couch Ate My Ambition is for anyone who has ever canceled plans to lie down, ignored a notification from a passive-aggressive owl, or felt a deep kinship with a ceiling stain named Gerald.Spoiler: I never learn Italian. I never go to the gym. I never write the novel. But I do learn the difference between hiding and resting. And I discover that a single green grape, placed on the left armrest each morning, is enough to keep the hunger at bay.