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Up and down.

(5 minute read.)

Burnout recovery. And relapse (again).

Recently (the past month-or-three) I've been significantly questioning potential over-enthusiasm and poor judgment in my project decisions. What I thought was a good idea at the time I now think differently about. I've written about this before…

I often think 'well that's a stupid idea, and the name is shite—and even if it isn't a stupid idea, the name is still shite'.

When using AI to provide an objective analysis, to view a project as if it were somebody else's rather than mine, I might think 'that's a decent project, it's actually quite clever'… but then feel 'Who the hell am I to try and do something like that? Do I have the ability? And besides, there's others who're far better placed (smarter/established/more resources) than me, doing similar stuff.'

I frequently get random moments of 'OMG—what the hell have I done, in even thinking I could do this?'. And feel almost everything I do is a mistake, even when I look at it rationally and know that it's not. With it comes a feeling of 'none of it will work, and I'll never again earn any money'. Also present is no small amount of regret and guilt and shame.

More recently, I've started to feel 'this is sub-standard, it's not good enough' about my work, even when I know it's not.

Additionally, where I previously had enthusiasm I now have apathy—I'm just not interested in most (almost all) of my projects. And I recognise this is also a consequence/symptom of burnout.

With this current down-cycle, I've recently become increasingly aware that in having so many projects, even when inactively queued for later introduction sometime during the next year-or-two, and my planned extensive outsourcing, I'm impeding and damaging myself—architect of my own doom, etcetera—through 'context-switching fatigue'… mental depletion that occurs when toggling between tasks/projects.

And I recognise my capacity has diminshed compared to when I was in a phase of adding projects. I can't do as much as I could perhaps a year ago, and it'd be daft to bet on an improvement. I've learned, and am adjusting accordingly—for a worst- rather than best-case scenario. I'm reducing my workload.

I can't continue to bounce between recovery and relapse, and so I need to stabilise—toward which having far fewer projects is sensible.

So the consequence of taking on what I now consider to be too many projects earlier is dumping probably too many now. I'm over-compensating, and doing so with impaired judgment. I know I'm making poor decisions regarding whether to retain or jettison specific projects.

it can be mentally paralyzing to decide what to do. I know that some are worth retaining and others not. But because my decision-making ability is wonky, I can't be sure of which.

So I make the best decision I can, again AI-assisted, knowing and accepting that some decisions will be poor—'ll keep stuff I should've dumped, and dump stuff I should've kept.

Part of this is 'taking the path of least resistance'. To save mental energy, I might accept the easiest and most convenient option rather than the best one—'if I dump a project, I no longer have to think about it'. (But that's of course flawed thinking, because whether I retain-or-not, I often still continue to think about the decisions long after they've been taken.)

Currently, I'm shedding 'considerably more than a few' projects, costing me a not insignificant amount of money (on wasted domain fees for projects now jettisoned), and that hurts—because it's money I can't afford to lose (from personal savings I perhaps can't even afford to spend), and could've put it to better use.

And my already low self-confidence is taking another hit.

Anyway, enough—this is simply another sit-rep update.

Added May 19 2026 by g.

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