I've been playing a while and enjoyed it as a chill game with occasional horror, but now I know I only got 40-ish in-game days until it all ends, I'm feeling a little pressured to min-max my time, and it's less enjoyable. (And yeah, I know there's other modes that last forever, but that removes the story events). 

Originally, I thought story progression was based on the events and signals you encounter and places you explore, and I wonder if that could be made an alternative option. 

At least until the actual release of the game, the Story mode doesn't actually end. After the "final" day, it effectively just becomes Infinite mode and keeps going. 

Though, I feel like this should be an option in the full release as well, where you can keep going on a story mode save after completing the game without having to do some file shenanigans to manually convert the save to Infinite.

You can kinda keep playing after it ends