Escapism

I'm back at a low point this week and I'm not really sure how I keep getting here. The business is up 40% from last year. I have an engineer working full-time on Portal, a UI project that has been in a perpetual freeze-state for years due to lack of time and energy on my end. I have a wonderful family that seems to have finally settled into life's new rhythm after adding another little one to the flock late last year.

Everything's seemingly great. But for some reason I find myself perpetually stuck in a freeze-state, unable to "start."

I feel a constant sense of urgency to be working, yet I cannot do real work. I feel addicted to — scouring after — any form of dopamine: check X, post on X, check Slack, check email, check Instagram, check GitHub, check Stripe, check Discord, check X…

On and on and on it goes.

I feel a constant sense of guilt to be productive, yet I cannot. I sit in front of an empty editor or an empty prompt, unable to "start."

I used to look down on people with severe ADHD. I couldn't understand how somebody could be so 'unmotivated.' Boy have I have been humbled this last year. I now see that it's a freeze-state.

I feel like autistic burnout has erased the good parts of my ASD brain — the engine — and left me stranded, dysfunctional, in a weird catatonic freeze-state that I can only escape momentarily through an impulsive sense of urgency: a production bug pops up, a PR shows up that kicks me into "problem-solving" mode, or a customer asks for something and it's a deal-breaker to not have it.

Without that sense of urgency, I feel like I'm quite literally stuck. And I can't seem to manufacture a sense of urgency to do a specific thing from the general sense of urgency I feel to "work."

I used to be able to manufacture that flow-state and hyper-focus — give me good music, a good plan, and I'd be set for weeks.

I can no longer do that and it infuriates me. It has crushed my self-confidence as a founder and a business owner. It has zapped the joy out of the work that I used to love, because I cannot work.

It has quite literally turned my world upside down because my output became my identity. I could do anything. And now I cannot.

I feel I've lost the part of my mind that used to drive things forward, and what's left is the worst of me — the overwhelmed, unkind, overworked, unattentive, overstimulated, unmasked me.

(I'm somehow unable to work, yet overworked.)

I keep acting like if I stand at my desk, the metaphorical switch will flip, eventually, and I'll go back to who I was — back to the driven founder who got me here. But I don't know if the switch even works anymore. I don't know if he's even there anymore. I can't find him.

So I sit in my office working, but not really. I sit staring at all of the possibilities, yet unable to summon one into existence.

Once out of my office, I escape into my screen — the captivating Blue Screen of Death — researching and planning for tomorrow, hoping that tomorrow will be the day I can finally start doing again.

(Either that or doom-scrolling.)

I'm home, out of the office, but I'm not. I hit the same freeze-state when my kids ask me to play with them. I want to — oh do I want to again! — but I'm unable to "start." I feel hollowed out and drained.

Worse, I feel like I've been using work as a way to escape life when it gets too overwhelming — and life has been very overwhelming lately. But I'm not sure why other than blaming it on autistic burnout. But there's no specific "why," at least that I know of.

All I can think of is that I used to live a very selfish life, and I could live in a way that worked for me. But now I live a very selfless life, and I no longer feel I have room for any of that.

Yet, I am selfish, unable to do the good work I have before me — the duties of a husband, of a father, of a businessman.

Oh Christ, help me!

I wake up, rush through the "good morning" pleasantries, grab coffee, throw headphones on — hoping that I can finally be me again. But I often just end up escaping into a music-induced catatonic state, scratching around for a morsel of productivity.

This habit of escapism isn't healthy. I'm not actually being productive at work, and I evidently can't brute-force it anymore.

I'm stuck in an endless burnout-crash loop — constantly fighting off burnout, recovering just enough to turn the engine on, but I can't go anywhere. Then I burnout and crash again, ad infinitum.

It's like I'm recharging my phone's battery to 10% each night only to wonder why it keeps dying before I've even woken up.

I'm not sure how to actually recover and exit the loop.