The digital spreadsheet tracking his job applications had long since stopped feeling like a tool for progress; it was a cemetery of his efforts. Over the last two years, he had sent fifty resumes to every available vacancy he could find. Half of the companies made him feel entirely invisible by never replying with a single word, leaving his applications to rot in digital voids. The other half chose different professional ways of saying “no,” their polite, automated rejection templates arriving like clockwork to dismantle his confidence piece by piece, as if the world were forcing him to slow down.

Instead of slowing down to breathe and ask himself what he truly wanted, however, panic drove him to stack more goals onto his already collapsing shoulders. He told himself he just needed to pivot, to try harder, to be more. He loved to draw, and he loved the artistry of ink on skin, so he thought, why not become a tattoo artist? He spent the last of his savings on the best affordable tattoo machine, ink, and practice fake skins he could find, convincing himself it was an investment he’d earn back in the future. But learning by himself in a cramped apartment without a mentor—because he couldn’t afford one—proved infinitely tougher than he thought, making every shaky, uneven line he drew on the rubber pads feel like another failure.

He didn’t stop there. He threw himself into the chaotic world of freelance graphic design, taking on underpaid gigs with demanding clients just to get any kind of income, completely stepping outside of his expertise. At the same time, he scrambled for low-paying freelance copywriting gigs, trying desperately not to lose his touch on a skill he had honed for 13 years. He was fiercely refusing to lose to the AI writing tools that everyone around him had suddenly started using, but the defiance felt exhausting. He fought on, entirely without realizing that he was just adding another layer of suffocating worry to his mind—that the looming fear of technology erasing his identity was blinding him to the toll it was taking on his soul.

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