Despite my big talk a week or two ago, I didn’t get very unstuck on my coding project. I spent last week listing and selling stuff, sleeping weird, writing some, getting a little kitchen mojo back, and generally letting my brain make fart noises any time I looked at the gap in the code pictured above.
(The idea that recharging or regrouping is a multi-day, or multi-anything, work in progress, and not something I can force to happen after one good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast, is something I need to work on and beyond the scope of this publication.)
Stalling out on a project hits different after 50, for sure. All those impostor syndrome questions are amplified like the creak of a gallows: what’s the point of this? Nobody asked you to make this. Are you going to make any money off this? You know other people are better at this. Should you be doing this at your age?
And there’s the constant thrum in the background, like high-tension wires running through your skull, with even more big-picture questions you can’t possibly answer to your own shitty brain’s satisfaction. You’re how old now? You’ll never get where you want to be. You’ve peaked. Maybe a long time ago! You threw all that gifted-kid potential down the well. You’re not fast anymore. You’re not smart anymore. You’re not sexy anymore. You’re not funny any more. You’re not slick and you never were.
Why are you still sitting here? Get out to pasture, you dumb lump.
The only answer I have to those questions is “I’m gonna do it anyway.” I can’t deny any of that. Not to myself, not so’s I’d believe it. But I’m gonna do it anyway. That’ll have to do, for its own sake.
Whether my brain has any follow-up questions or not remains to be seen.