Month 7: August 2026

I’m proud to announce I’ve successfully burned myself out this summer.

I haven’t really worked on any of my projects in the month of August. I’ve been noodling on why, and I have a few ideas but no real answers. Rather than the same shape of monthly update I’ve written the last half year, I’m choosing to get back to my journal style writing to figure out how to get back on my feet.

Culprit 1: I am working myself to the bone to hit a nearly impossible deadline in my day job. My team is working on a project that in 2025 would be a 2+ year project. Now, in 2026, thanks to AI, our company has given us 6 months to complete it. Even with AI, it is absolutely grueling, exhausting, and soul sucking. My creative energy is zapped. By the end of my work day, all I want is to be horizontal. Before my work day, I am too aware of the 8 hour marathon ahead to even consider working on my side project.

Culprit 2: AI fatigue. I am cooling my enthusiasm with AI. I spend all day every day in it. It’s getting better at its job. But the flip side of that is fewer problems for me, the human, to solve. Fewer ways I’m expressing problem solving creativity. I feel I’ve turned into a babysitter rather than someone executing meaningful creative work. This is true in my day job, and it is true in my side projects.

Culprit 3: This app work is not aligned with my intrinsic motivation. It is a means to an end. Make apps, make money. I’m realizing that is only sustainable for so long. In my life, the behaviors I’ve practiced the longest are rewarding in and of themselves. They don’t directly serve another goal. The behavior is what rewards me. Daily reading, exercise, meditation, journaling. I don’t read to acquire a certain amount of knowledge. I do it because I like it. I don’t meditate for a future goal. I meditate because it brings me intensely into the present. I don’t exercise to be able to lift a certain amount of weight. I exercise because the act itself makes me feel good. The way I’ve been approaching this work has been as a means to an end. That isn’t sustainable.

The fact of the matter is all three of these culprits are factoring into my deadened motivation. Life is very cyclical. Energy goes up, it goes down. Motivation goes up, it goes down. So does creativity. I accept this, even though being in the troughs sucks. And I’m in the trough right now. I know it won’t last though. This too will pass, like everything that has come before it. I’ll develop a sharpened view of what to do next with my life, my career, my creativity.

A part of my intuition is telling me just to make for its own sake. Write to my past self. Make my apps free. Make apps I want, not apps I think others will need. Just make shit with no expectation of return. Learn to love the process. Stop holding myself to deadlines and targets. Straight up enjoy creating for its own sake. Use less AI. Write more. Continue to read. Share what I’m learning. Articulate and share my own principles. See what comes out of making for its own sake. Let it be a soothing process, not another item in a to do list.

I’ll try not to force anything. I’ll try to trust the process. I’ll try to nurture my energy and give myself what I need, whatever that is. We’ll see how this unfolds in the coming weeks. For now, I persist.