The Insanity of Preparation

I feel stuck.

It is a cliché to say, I know. But I am writing this to rant. I am writing this to purge. I am stressed by the things I allow to happen and the things I cannot control. But mostly I am stressed by my own choices. I am drowning in a mess of my own making.

I am trying. I really am. I tell myself I am doing my best to be productive. Yet my "best" looks suspiciously like hours of video games and doomscrolling through social media. I lie to myself with impressive creativity. I call the gaming sessions "stress relief," as if I have earned a break from doing absolutely nothing. I call the scrolling "market research," convincing myself that watching Ali Abdaal or Better Ideas on YouTube is the same thing as actually working.

That is the insanity. I know exactly what I am doing. I am adding stress by trying to relieve it. I am wasting mental energy pretending to recharge. It is a loop. I feel guilty for not working, so I seek distraction to numb the guilt, which leads to more lost time, which creates more guilt. It is a perfect, self-sustaining engine of misery.

It feels ridiculous to complain. I know the privilege I have. I just finished medical school. I am on a break before entering the hospital as a junior doctor. By all social standards, I should be resting. I should be grateful for this downtime. Instead, I am bleeding money and energy on passion projects that have zero return on investment. I am chasing a career in writing, music, and film with no guarantee it will ever pay a cent.

I am a freeloader. There is no nicer way to say it. I use my parents' money to fund a "hustle" that hasn't hustled anything yet. I sit in my room, staring at a laptop, typing away with the hope that I can make something of my life. But I achieve nothing. I am a "talking creator." I have the ideas, I have the taste, but I lack the execution.

The Productivity Trap

I have been obsessed with productivity for years. I love the systems. I love the tools. But I have crossed the line from "productive" to "burden." I have become a collector of methods rather than a producer of work.

I waste a fortune on apps I barely use. I have a Google One family plan. I have a business account for storage. I have Canva Pro for graphics I rarely make. I have Craft Docs for writing I rarely finish. I subscribe to these things because they make me feel like a professional. They are costumes. If I pay for the "Pro" version, I must be a Pro, right? It is a purchase of identity. I am buying the feeling of competence so I don't have to do the hard work of actually being competent.

Wrong.

I switch between apps constantly. I have no home base. I have no single source of truth for my work. One day I am organizing tasks in Google Tasks, the next I am trying a new notion template. I spend more time managing my subscriptions than managing my creative output. If I were actually organized, I wouldn't need five different monthly fees to prove it.

It is style over substance. It is the "shallow execution" I hate in others, manifesting in myself. I am building a complex productivity system to manage a career that doesn't exist yet. It is like building a factory but never turning on the machines.

The View from the Hotel Room

This is my current view from the hotel window.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Penang. I am here with my mom. We are supposed to be tourists. We are supposed to be relaxing.

Instead, we decided to laze around all day.

Take today. I woke up and the first thing I did was play video games. Then I spent hours practicing how to edit videos. Note the word "practicing." I didn't edit a video to publish. I didn't make something real. I "practiced." I stayed in the safe zone where judgment cannot touch me. Then breakfast. Then I edited an article. But before that? More video games.

There is nothing wrong with gaming. There is nothing wrong with resting. But there is something wrong with the flow. I have no identity. I have no concept of time. I have been lost for two months and it is driving me crazy. The days bleed into each other. I am drifting. The "Melancholy Artist" in me is winning, but not in a creative way. It is just winning in the sadness department.

I feel overwhelmed emotionally, biologically, and mentally. My sleep is garbage. My hygiene is slipping. I am a system-builder whose own internal system has collapsed. I am supposed to be the reliable one, the one who hates "quarter-assed" effort, yet here I am, giving my own life a quarter of my ass.

The Radical Shift

I am done with the noise.

I need a home base. A place where my thoughts live. A place I can trust. I tried to make it pretty. I tried to make it perfect. But "pretty" doesn't get the work done. "Pretty" is just another form of procrastination.

I am cutting the baggage. I am cancelling the subscriptions that don't serve the work. I am moving everything to Google. It is ugly. It is basic. The interface isn't "aesthetic." But it works. It is reliable. It syncs.

I need to stop "preparing" to be a creator and just create. I need to stop "optimizing" my life and just live it. I need to apply my own philosophy: Something is better than nothing. A finished, imperfect video on a hard drive is better than a perfect workflow for a video that doesn't exist.

I have to be radical. I have to hunt down these problems and smash them against the wall. No more excuses. No more "market research." No more hiding behind "practice."

I need to take a shower. I need to get up. I need to prove to myself that I can still execute.

Let’s go, Danial. Move.