There comes a point when you are drowning in so many different projects with their own special deadlines that reality as you know it fades away. The projects pile up one after the other. At first, it seems harmless. You take on one project, then another, then a third and a fourth and a fifth. Even then, it’s nothing you can’t handle.

But then you look back at your to-do list and realize holy shit, you’re currently pulled into at least two dozen commitments, if not more. You don’t even know how many. Just, a shitload. You scramble to finish everything on time while doing the absolute best work you’re capable of doing. And as you finish one project, a completely new one gets added to the list. It never ends.

The background of your workplace area chips away like flecks of old paint. Nothing matters anymore besides the work. Food is forgotten, conversations are abandoned midsentence, sleep is cashed in for extra hours to get the work done. The world as you once knew it becomes insane. People start arguing about True Detective plagiarizing Ligotti when it’s obviously just a case of influence and homage, but every time you consider weighing in your own opinion, you forget what everybody’s even arguing about and you find yourself back in front of another project, because you just finished one workload and now another one’s nagging for some attention.

So you work on the new project and your eyeballs dry out because you forget to blink and your stomach commits suicide because you haven’t eaten in two days and your boss at your unimportant shitty dayjob is getting on your ass because you’re slacking and none of it is important, none of it at all. The only thing that matters is the next word you write, the next character you give the gift of life.

You flee to your own private catacombs and lock the door behind you. Reality has disintegrated and in its place is merely a dream. A dream you experience while awake, only you aren’t really sure you’re awake. You aren’t really sure of anything anymore. You just hope and hope that once you finally do wake up, years from now on your deathbed, the work you’ve done isn’t complete and total shit.

But until then, there’s more work to be done, and there’s never not going to be work to be done while your heart continues to function, and the great wonderful truth is you wouldn’t trade any of this for the world.