I don't know if this even counts as a confession, really. Like, is it a bad thing to feel… nothing? When someone you admire, someone you’ve looked up to since you were, like, a student, is just… broken? I mean, I guess it’s bad. It FEELS bad, in that quiet way where you know you’re supposed to react but the reaction just isn’t there. My mentor, he's been in the game for, what, twenty years? Maybe more. He's always been the gruff, creative type, you know? The kind who’d spend hours drawing some crazy detail for a project that would never get built, just because he loved the craft. We were working on this small project today, a simple renovation, but it’s my FIRST solo one. Like, *my* design, *my* client meetings, *my* everything. I was so buzzed, so full of ideas, but he just kept sighing, running his hand over his face. He started talking about how he feels like he’s just moving money around, not building anything real anymore. How he wakes up every single day, every day, dreading coming in. And how he should have just stuck with painting, the thing he actually loved before he got sensible. He said it all, just, right there, looking straight through me. And I just… nodded. I kept trying to hide my excitement about the door handles I picked out, about the way the light hits that one wall. Like, I *wanted* to tell him about the cool new software trick I found, but he was just… defeated. It was like watching someone drown slowly and I just stood there, thinking about the perfect shade of grey for the bathroom tiles. I think maybe, deep down, I'm scared. Scared that in twenty years, that'll be me. That my passion will dry up and I’ll just be this… empty shell. But right now, all I feel is this weird… quietness. Like I should be upset for him, for me, for all of us, but my brain just won’t kick into gear.