Coping with the Dread of Inspiration

For the most part, my blog posts are a way for me to share my enthusiasm and learning about a particular technology with the larger community. I find that learning enough about a topic to blog about it (or write a book) really helps me deeply understand a technology.

This post, however, isn’t about languages or a specific technology. It’s about my evil brain — a constant nemesis lurking over my shoulder whispering terrible things in my ear. It discourages me when I need encouragement, it fills me with despair when I need hope.

And to the topic of this post — it fills me with dread when I am inspired. A couple of weeks ago I had what I thought was a really cool idea for a side project. The inspiration and excitement welled up within me until I was ready to burst. I needed to build, to create and provide an outlet for this wonderful idea. While researching some details for this idea I discovered that a number of other people had already produced fully functioning versions of this thing.

Over the years, I’ve had quite a few experiences where I got incredibly inspired and excited about a project, only to have that project fail for any number of reasons. I feel a deep sense of loss when nothing comes of these bursts of inspiration (this also applies to my fiction writing and electronics tinkering, not just programming). As someone who is driven and compelled to build, confronting a perceived inability to create is the worst kind of torture.

At an intellectual level, I am keenly aware of the Pavlovian events at play here. If you show a dog a treat and then punish it when it tries to take the reward, eventually the dog will stop getting excited about treats and go hungry. The dog learns to associate the punishment with something that used to elicit a positive reaction, like food or toys.

This awareness does me little good, however. We don’t get to apply logic and reason to memories the way we might deal with a situation as it happens in real-time. Emotional memory doesn’t listen to reason. Before the Spock part of my brain can critically analyze what’s going on, my “lizard brain” has already triggered the fight or flight reflex, recalling the traumatic emotional memories of unrealized potential and wasted inspiration.

I envy those who don’t have this problem, or those who can shrug it off and get down to business. For me, I can often be found pacing in my office, struggling with the ideas in my head that are trying to discourage me from pursuing a fun project.

“No one will ever use this,” the evil-brain says. “Other people already did this, so you have nothing of value to contribute here.” The more inspired I get, the greater the sense of looming dread. I chew my nails to the quick waiting for the other shoe to drop, fearing some sudden realization that will hit me and then convince me to shelve my side project and discard all of that energy, inspiration, and daydreaming.

Friends, in their attempt to help encourage me, will often say things like, “just do it.” This is far easier said than done. “Just sit down and start typing.” If only it were that easy. I wonder if this is the programmer equivalent of writer’s block, because I experience similar anxiety and dread while trying to write my fantasy books.

Somewhere along the line, through some traumatic event I can’t even recall, I stopped prioritizing the journey over the destination. I used to love building for the sake of building, and the little voice in my head telling me to stop held little sway over me. More recently, however, that little voice attempting to discourage me and get me to drop all my side projects has been getting stronger and more persuasive.

I honestly don’t know what to do to fix this problem other than doing as my friends say and “just start typing.” I miss the days when I could just sit down, tune out the world, crank my headphone volume and just build. I could create for 10 hours straight and come away feeling more energized than when I started.

I still thrive on the joy of learning, and I need to learn something new every day, but my ability to suppress the dark part of my mind that whispers “give up” all day long grows weaker.

Hopefully some day soon I will find the secret and be able to return to the stress- and anxiety-free days of old where I could just build because it made me happy and I didn’t need any more motivation than that. Until then, I plod on, taking one step at a time, writing one line of code at a time and hoping tomorrow it will be easier.