In short, this cargo cult approach doesn’t work. At all. It’s worse, actually, than being merely nonfunctional; it’s dysfunctional. The added stress of both managing and failing to meet these objectives strongly exacerbates the sense of looming failure. It adds degrees of failure, like a geology of failure, with strata and sediment of disappointment and self-deprecation, and below it all the fossils of dreams long ago crushed. The sad, bitter petroleum, which may yet be refined into industriousness but which nevertheless almost always creates toxic byproducts.

Here is where I’d write the preamble to a hopeful resolution, starting with a coy “However”, a come-hither wink, and rolling into some tips for riding entropy without drowning. Maybe if I were writing a self-help blog or an “article” that’d be picked up by Outbrain. But all I have left for now is that I’m just trying to tread water and learn to swim. Again.

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