Escaping the Burnout Dopamine Spiral

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know we’ve just started a new series about mental health and freelancing.

As it turns out, the timing of that post (for the writer—i.e., me) couldn’t be more appropriate. I’m the one who needs the reminder right now.

I’m having a serious mental health moment. I’ve hit hardcore burnout—the kind where my brain feels like a potato 24/7, and I can’t truly focus on anything unless it feeds my growing dopamine addiction.

What that actually looks like

Lately, I’ve been getting stuck in cognitive loops. I bounce between low-value tasks, check the same sites repeatedly, or spin up side projects that don’t go anywhere.

It’s not just procrastination. My brain is desperate for anything that might cut through the fog. So I chase things that give me a little dopamine hit—just to feel like something is happening.

As an example, I coded a small web app that lets users chat with a Python backend as if it were a chatbot (using OpenAI integration). Is that valuable? Not at all to FoldEd. And certainly not to an already burned-out me.

I’ll do almost anything instead of:

• the work I actually need to be doing, or
• resting so that my brain can recover enough to do the work I need to do.

My current pattern is a spiral, and it’s only getting worse.

But things were moving, right?

If you’ve been to the FoldEd site before, you might’ve noticed things look different. I recently gave the site a full refresh. If you haven’t seen the old version, here’s what it used to look like:

The new site is a big improvement, right?

Here’s the thing. The redesign started out as one of those “spin-up side projects” that I did instead of the actual work I’m supposed to be doing.

And to make things worse, while the new front end looks nice, under the hood, there are problems.

I’m not a web developer. I’m a learning designer with just enough HTML and CSS to get into trouble. With the help of AI, I managed to build the new version of the site, but the structure underneath isn’t quite right—and now I’m running into issues I don’t know how to fix.

All of that only compounds the burnout-dopamine cycle. Because now, development work needs to be undone and rebuilt properly. That takes time and a functioning brain, neither of which I currently have. And while it’s broken, I can’t get myself to focus on anything else, because my burned-out brain wants to solve the problem. But it also doesn’t, because solving it is work. So it finds some other problem to solve, which wastes more time and still doesn’t achieve anything valuable.

You can see where this is going, right?

Hitting pause

I need to take a break. A real one.

That means the regular blog posts are going on pause for a while. Website development is on pause. Course development is on pause. There’s no sense pushing forward when I don’t have the focus or clarity to do the work well.

I’m taking some leave—because I really, truly just need some rest. I need a reset.

What happens next

The hope is that a proper break will give me the space to reset—to come back with more energy, better focus, and a bit more capacity to move FoldEd forward.

If you’ve read this far, I appreciate you sticking with me.

Thanks for reading.