"Something in your chest is heavy, alarms ring in the back of your mind. You know you have something to do, but all around you the screaming sirens are muted. After a few hours (days, weeks-) you loose the nerve to ask. In your mind, you are already too late. But the sense of urgency is not there, even though the buzzing anxiety doesn't stop pricking the inside of your skin. You try, you swear to yourself 'I will do it today. I will do it now'. Sometimes, you manage to start, a well of effort spent on a simple task. You know you shouldn't stop, you know how this goes, but there's a voice in the back of your head that whispers 'Its fine, you can take a small break'. But a million things seem more interesting and fun and worth doing than what you have to do, and the small break costs you hours or days of progress. There comes a point where you no longer find anything else worth doing. You stop finishing things. Your attention flickers and wavers between distractions. What you have to do is glaringly obvious, and yet you are unable to muster the nerve to start it again. It doesn't make sense to you. Logically, you realize that it is not that difficult, that you should have no problem doing it, that the faster you work on it the faster you will finish it. But as the days go by, and the anxiety never fades, shame chokes you every time you think of asking for help. You know you should have finished it ages ago. You know you are capable of it. But your work is a blackhole and you are paralyzed in place."

- June 2020