It finally happened. Burnout.
I've had my foot on the gas pedal with marketing since 2020 pretty much constantly, don't think I've taken a single day off other than when my dad was hospitalized last year.
Taught myself marketing, SEO, browser automation, HTTP requests, social signal botting, using fine tuned AI models, largely inspired by journeys like
@BlogPro and
@lucky.sparks. Got some really great clients and was able to offer value to them.
Here's what's been happening the past 2 weeks, though:
The first warning sign was that the caffeine "stopped working". Usually, I would wake up, work out, meditate, cold shower and pound down black coffee and jump into work. For the past few weeks I've not felt that surge of motivation kick in the way it used to.
Then I missed a workout.
And a meditation session.
The caffeine stopped working. It made me antsy and anxious instead of motivated.
The next warning sign, daytime sleepiness. I never, ever, ever feel tired in the day, it's absolutely ludicrous to me that a few days ago I thought I'd take a nap. There's nothing wrong with a mid day nap, btw, I'm just saying that FOR ME, it's unusual.
2 weeks ago, when this started, I was still rationalizing it away "ah, maybe I just needed it" etc...but the past week, my progress has slowly come to a grinding halt. Yesterday, for the first time in forever, I spent the whole day lazing around, not even touching my to-do list. It felt terrible, but I just couldn't get my brain to engage. I slept around 16 hours. (Btw I'm not chronically on low sleep, I'm getting 7 hours on most days).
I know that the sane advice right now is "take a break, son". However, I can't really do that. I've made some client commitments based on my old work ethic. Need to snap out of this malaise ASAP. I'll carve out room for a break in a month, but right now, I NEED to be in attack mode, not like a fucking turd sitting around watching youtube videos.
Suggestions? Advice? Tough love?
