The screen... it just… stares back. For hours. DAYS, even. Just that BLINKING CURSOR. Mocking. I tell my “friends” – well, acquaintances, really, the ones who understand “the hustle” – that I LOVE it. The freedom. The creative spirit. All that jazz. What a CROCK. It used to be so easy. A blank canvas, a new brief. The EXCITEMENT. Brain buzzing with ideas, color palettes, typography. Now it's… nothing. A void. I used to diagnose clients’ visual communication issues. Now I think *I* need a diagnosis. Is it burnout? Creative block? Or something more… terminal? Like my design brain has just… atrophied. Gone dormant. Hibernating indefinitely. It’s not just the ideas. It’s the drive. The sheer EFFORT to even OPEN the Adobe suite. Like trying to lift a grand piano with a sprained pinky. I tell myself it’s just a phase. A dip. Every artist has them, right? But this isn't a dip. This feels like a permanent descent into the Mariana Trench of mediocrity. And the worst part? The bills. No benefits, of course. Just the gig economy grind. Every invoice a scramble. Every blank screen a ticking time bomb. I see these young whippersnappers on LinkedIn, raving about their "passion projects," their "side hustles." I want to scream. This *was* my passion. This *was* my life. Now it's just… work. And not even good work. Just… the absence of work. The dread. The quiet despair of staring at a blinking cursor at 2 AM, pretending I’m just “percolating ideas.” Ha! What a laugh.