I'm sitting here and the blue light from my monitor is making my veins look like frozen lightning under my skin. It's not a big deal really, just a weird observation at 2 AM. I’ve been staring at this white rectangle—this "canvas"—for three hours and forty minutes. My cat is snoring on a pile of unpaid invoices and the radiator is clanking like a ghost trying to get out of the basement. I tell everyone I’m "killing it" lately. I told Sarah at lunch yesterday that the freelance life is pure adrenaline, all fire and focus, and she looked at me with this envy that felt like a layer of grease on my face. But the truth is I’m just... nothing. The cursor is blinking. A tiny black heartbeat against a white void. It’s mocking me. It’s a rhythmic reminder that I’ve got nothing left to say with a stylus or a hex code. I used to see colors in my sleep, vivid gradients that felt like velvet, but now everything just looks like the back of a grocery receipt. Gray. Smudged. Utilitarian. I’m fifty-four and my brain feels like a damp sponge someone left behind the sink six months ago and now it’s just stiff and useless. My old man used to come home from the mill with soot buried so deep in his pores it looked like he was made of charcoal. He’d sit at the kitchen table and stare at his tea until it went cold and skin formed on the top. I thought he was just tired. Now I realize he was probably just GONE inside, the same way I am now. He worked with his back and I work with "vision," but the exhaustion is the same heavy blanket. It’s a blue-collar fatigue dressed up in a designer turtleneck. I feel like a thief because I’m not hauling steel, but my soul feels like it’s been through a rock tumbler. This is stupid but I spent twenty minutes tonight just moving a single circle around the screen. Left. Right. Up. Down. Like a fly hitting a windowpane over and over. I should be drafting the logo for that artisanal bakery in the Heights—some BULLSHIT about "rustic charm" and "hand-hewn textures"—but I can’t even pick a font. Every typeface looks like a different way to lie. Serifs are just teeth. Sans serifs are just smooth, clinical walls. I can’t find the spark because the well isn't just dry, it's been paved over with asphalt. I keep my phone face down because if I see one more "hustle harder" post I might actually throw it through the glass. My friends think I’m some kind of bohemian success story. They see the Instagram posts of my "curated workspace" with the succulents and the expensive pens, but they don't see the dust or the way I have to drink three cups of scorched coffee just to feel my pulse. I’m a high-end fraud. I’m selling "brand identities" to people when I don't even have a reflection anymore. I’m just a collection of Adobe shortcuts and a fake smile. Last week, a client asked for something "disruptive." I wanted to tell him the only thing being disrupted was my ability to care if his organic dog treat company ever made a dime. Instead I nodded and smiled and used words like *synergy* and *aesthetic* until my jaw ached. I came home and sat in the dark for two hours because the light from the fridge was too loud. Everything is too loud lately, except for the ideas. Those are silent. DEAD silent. I used to be a bonfire of creativity and now I'm just a pile of cold ash that someone keeps poking with a stick. I remember when I first started out, I’d get this electric hum in my chest when I hit on a good layout. It felt like winning a race. Now, it’s just about making sure the check clears so I can pay the property tax and buy the cheap cat food. My hands don't shake, they just feel heavy, like they're made of lead pipes. I look at the screen and it feels like I’m staring into the sun until my retinas burn out. It doesn't even hurt anymore. That’s the scary part. It should hurt to be this empty, but it’s just... flat. Like a soda left out in the sun for three days. Maybe I’ll just go to bed and tell myself I’ll have some kind of epiphany tomorrow. That’s the lie I tell the mirror every morning while I’m putting on the expensive concealer to hide the fact that I haven't slept since 2019. I'll get up, post a picture of a sketchbook I haven't actually touched in months, and wait for the "likes" to roll in like tiny, digital crumbs. It’s a living, I guess. Or at least it’s a way to keep the lights on so I can sit in the glow of a blank screen for another night. I’m just waiting for the clock to hit 4 AM so I can pretend I’ve worked a full shift. It’s pathetic, really... but whatever. It’s just work. I’ll just... keep staring until the pixels start to move on their own.