A few months ago, I was feeling very creatively stuck.

This is a problem because my job relies almost entirely on personal curiosity and the

generative act of collecting a lot of inspiration and information and then transforming it into

something interesting. And it felt like the engine powering my brain kept misfiring.

I was mentally foggy, like there were too many tabs open at once and the spinning beach ball

of death kept appearing to warn me that my operating system was overheating.

Here's an actual journal entry from this period when it felt like my brain was betraying me,

which is particularly illustrative. Quote, it's frustrating when I can't take my stream of

consciousness thoughts and immediately turn it into a bop of a piece without really working at it.

It bothers me that it's taking me so much time and struggling an effort and riding around

in the sentences to figure out what the f*** I'm trying to say. And, quote, clearly, despite being

a little bit confused, I had not lost my f*** for the dramatic. But I knew there was

something deeper at play than just needing a few days off. And I ended up doing an exercise

around limiting beliefs from a framework called the work developed by Byron Katie because I was

so desperate to get unstuck and to stop spinning my wheels. To summarize briefly, the exercise

asks you to identify a limiting belief that's causing you pain and then asks for follow-up questions.

Is it true? Can you absolutely know it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought?

And who would you be without that thought? Now, my limiting belief sent me down a rabbit hole

of unpacking deeply held borderline, puritanical ideas about the moral value of work ethic.

Namely, in order to be successful, I had to feel like I was working hard all the time. It had to

feel hard and it had to be a struggle that my life or my business would not improve unless I felt

like I was suffering. I mean, right? Like, that's heavy s***. The Catholic Guild runs very deep

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