So one day after work, when I was 25, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I stood up to it.
I decided to take control of my work-life balance and my creativity… And oh… it was a tough journey!
Something deep inside of me snapped that day…
As I decided to make a change, I was filled with determination, tears of hope flowing down my cheeks…
That was my survival instinct taking over… So I just PUSHED… I pushed as far as my will could take me… Then I pushed some more…
But trust me when I say, the journey was worth it. No miracles here. Just life at its rawest.
And I? Well, I just kept pushing… for years.
Determination meant everything to me. Isolation meant nothing to me. I never let it get the best of me.
I just pushed for hundreds… thousands of hours… because it was the only way I could try to revitalize my creativity.
For years, this struggle was the only thing that helped me cope…
It was the only time I could ever escape the haunting of those feelings… the isolation… the relentless boredom staring into me like a bottomless abyss of monotonous nothingness…
It was the silence between those hours of work that messed with my head the most, though.
That harrowing quietness in the home office…
See, when you work past your mental and creative barriers, the world around begins to fade away…
Physical discomfort vanishes. You feel nothing… You think nothing…
You just… Keep. Moving. Forward.
THEY call it the “workaholic’s high”. I call it my safe space.
Sure, it’s true what they say “You can’t outwork your demons”, but attempting to do so was the closest I ever got to inner peace.
Sitting at my desk was my sanctuary
Until it was taken away from me… Because guess what?
SURPRISE… After years of isolation and stifled creativity, my motivation finally gave in…
Then…
The treatments… Self-help books, online counseling, art therapy… These were my life for months as I searched for an answer… how to get rid of the isolation.
Then, the mental breakdown when they figured out that they couldn’t completely fix it MONTHS LATER, in the middle of my recovery stage… then, more treatments…
Then, yet another “recovery”…
Now let me ask you… what does RECOVERY mean to you?
See, my idea of recovery was to work again without feeling stifled or isolated. That’s all I ever asked for.
But the therapists had a different take on it.