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Ahoy from the bottom.
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Ahoy from the bottom.

Existential mid-life crisis has pulverised me into nothingness

Ali Dark
Apr 23
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Hi from my repurposed blog. If you subscribed to this for vegan branding tips, please know that I COULDN’T GIVE THAT SHIT AWAY and will no longer be trying to. It ends a ten year chapter in which I saw myself as a talented, but flailing designer type person, with a lot of potential that just needed the right environment to bloom.

The negative stories that competed with that story have fully taken over and coalesced, and while I know they are all still stories, nevertheless I recognise my hopelessness to act against them now. Those stories are:

  • I am paralysed by integrity.

  • I cannot commercialise my creativity.

  • Everything is a waste of time anyway.

  • I’m not actually even that good.

  • I’m not as nice to work with as I thought.

  • I can’t explain the value of what I do and I probably don’t even get it myself.

  • Design is a commodity and monetising it will mean eternal stress.

Etc Etc. In ten years of on and off attempting to commercial my design I have probably made about 20-30k, that’s outside of some full-time work gigs which I thoroughly did not enjoy.

Anyway this leaves me about half way through both my biological life (80/2) and my working life ((65-20)/2), with absolutely no goals, visions, inspirations or motivations.

I’ve already acted on all of my best intentions, perhaps not as wholeheartedly as I needed to, but just enough to have shown myself that working towards anything is a complete waste of time.

Sounds depressed? Well, I feel strangely liberated.

Where do I go from here? Am I still full of potential? Who knows, who cares? There is a serious mismatch between me and this world. I can’t seem to connect with it on any level in any meaningful way. For now, at least, I’m going to tune out.

Which feels dumb, because I know the world needs help, being at the crux of change where action or inaction can exponentially affect the future.

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