January 9-15, 2026

January 9-15

Looking back on the last week, the word that fits best is not depressed, not anxious, but stalled.

After the intensity of the holidays—building the Diane Method, finishing the album, working long hours with almost no friction—I expected a crash. Instead, what arrived was flatter. The highs were gone, but the darkness didn’t fully return either.

Only a week into the year, I realized something became uncomfortable to admit: while I’ve been building the Diane Method for others, I haven’t really been practicing it myself.

I kept circling the same question: How do I get back in?

I opened the memoir drafts and closed them again. Too many chapters. Too much unfinished weight. I considered a hybrid fiction project—half method, half speculation about where this could all go—and even started a separate thread for it. But sitting with it, I saw the real problem.

Whenever I work creatively, I don’t treat it as an exercise. I see the end result. I want it to be good. And the moment I let myself think that way, both the memoirs and the fiction become long commitments instead of a practice.

So I backed away from both.

That choice felt honest, but it didn’t solve the underlying problem: I still wasn’t using the method that had helped me in the first place.

The low point of the week came quietly. On Saturday afternoon, everything was fine on paper. We went out for sushi. The weather finally eased—sun, no brutal cold. On the drive home, my wife suggested taking the dog to the bigger park. Perfect day for it. I said no.

Not because I didn’t want to go, but because I already knew where my head was going: home, couch, shut down.

Later, I heard my wife and daughter laughing in the next room. Normally that gets a reflexive smile out of me. Nothing. The dog was tearing around the house and I was throwing her favorite toy. Still nothing.

No sadness.

No heaviness.

Just absence.

I did what I usually do in that state. YouTube. Body cam videos. Political noise. Anything that keeps the mind occupied without asking anything of me. That’s a familiar tell.

I kept trying to re-enter the work in small ways. Revisiting old fiction. Opening memoir chapters. None of it clicked.

With the memoirs, I hit the same wall every time. If I don’t find the chapters interesting—even in rough form—I lose momentum fast. I can step outside myself enough to ask, Would I read this if it weren’t mine? If the answer is no, my motivation collapses.

In theory, the method says: keep going anyway.

In reality, the energy just isn’t there.

A longtime collaborator sent me new songs and asked me to play on them. That should have excited me. It didn’t. I hear too many things I’d want to change, and I don’t want to hijack his work. I haven’t decided what to do with that yet.

In the background, there’s been another strange layer.

Everywhere I look, there are stories about AI psychosis, existential risk, end-of-the-world scenarios.

And then there’s what I’m doing here: slow writing, storytelling, self-examination.

It feels almost embarrassingly analog by comparison. Like something already out of time. Even if it works, it doesn’t feel like the future is waiting for it.

By midweek, things leveled out—not improved dramatically, but steadied.

More work. More interaction. More contact with people. That helped more than I expected. Structure still matters. Contact still matters.

Around then, a YouTuber appeared in my feed—someone talking openly about being stuck, about no longer fitting the persona he’d built, about not knowing what comes next. What struck me wasn’t just the content, but the parallels. Musician. Writer. Sober. Wrestling with identity after success. Even using AI thoughtfully, which is rare.

What mattered most was his insistence on telling the truth about uncertainty.

So I sent him a message.

Not asking for anything.

No promotion.

No favors.

Just my story, and a brief explanation of the Diane Method. It’s the first time I’ve shared the link directly with anyone.

Let’s see if I get a response.

So here I am at the end of another week in a holding pattern.

I feel lighter than I did a week ago, but not solved. Just steadier. And more convinced of one simple thing: if this method is going to mean anything, I have to stop thinking about where it goes, and start using it again.

Probably through the memoirs.

Probably without worrying what they become.

For now, that’s enough.


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