Abandon All Keyboards

It’s obnoxiously beautiful right now.

It’s a cracking, 10/10 stunner of a California sunset and it’s pouring in through the windows of this empty cafe as I click-clack on my infinite click-clack machine. It’s as if the whole world has become a kaleidoscope of West Coast reds and oranges just for me. But, alas, I don’t feel much of anything. I am, in fact, this: a total and absolute nothing inside. Familiar feelings of course, nothing scary at all, it’s just plain ol’ burnout. There was a rush of work over a few months—go, go, go! build, build, build!—and then: something clicked and I was done. No more gas in the tank. No vacancies at the inn. All spoons gone.

The problem with these feelings is that they come out of nowhere and I ignore the symptoms until they bleed into other parts of my life. But if I can’t care for writing or reading or code or design or anything fun and exciting then what even am I? Enthusiasm is my middle name! I was born to point at things excitedly! And yet in the evenings now I’ll watch a great movie or a TV show or play a game where ten thousand people poured years of their lives into it and — nothing.

It all just kinda washes over me.

When this sort of thing happens I know what I need: abandon all keyboards! Discard all screens! Throw myself into a stack of books and hurl my charmless corpse across a foreign city so that my empathy and hope refills itself. But right now it’s tough to be optimistic about that because today nothing matters. Work? Eh. Friends? Bleurgh. Going outside? Taking care of myself? Planning things? Bleurgh.

Bleurgh to all things!

In moments like this there’s a shift in me towards mean and unpleasant thoughts, a kind of cynicism that’s impossible to shake. I see the worst in people, almost as if I’m hoping for the worst things to happen. But that cruelty tends to become laser-focused on me. Like the other day, when I woke up and my very first thought to start the day was: “christ, I’m such a bad designer.”

Yikes! What the hell, brain! Also: please pick something more cool and interesting to be sad about at the very least! I get that deep down you crave being interesting and sad but this is the least interesting way to sad! Try harder!

Anyway, I’ve booked two weeks off work. I’ll plan something, go somewhere, write something. I’ll figure it out.

But, until then: bleurgh.