I owe you an explanation.
Four months ago I stopped posting, stopped writing, stopped showing up on here. Some of you noticed. Most of you probably didn’t, and that’s fine. But for the ones who did notice, and especially for the ones who already knew why, I want to tell this story the way it actually happened. Not the polished version. Not the one where I have it figured out. The real one.
Why? Because I wasn’t okay.
By October of last year, I had landed a contract I was genuinely grateful for. Good people trusted me enough to bring me on, and for the first time in a while, there was a paycheck coming in. In my eyes, things were getting better because my family was provided for. In truth, my family was always provided for, just not by me. Financially, we were stable, but not because of my active participation. Now I was back to being an active contributor to that provision. That should have been enough to settle my mind. It wasn’t.
Instead of sitting in the blessing, I was already thinking about what comes next. Three-month contract review period, then six months, then what? The anxiety came in waves at first, maybe once a week, this low hum of “what if” that would show up, make a mess of my thoughts, and then quiet down. But over two months, the waves got closer together. The hum got louder. And the space between episodes got smaller until there wasn’t really a space at all.
By mid-December, I tried to write an article about how AI isn’t going to replace us, at least not in the way the headlines say. I still believe that. But while I was writing it, I kept reading the takes of people I respect, smart people, thoughtful people, and they were all saying the same thing. Get ready. It’s coming. AI is coming for knowledge work. My work. I felt so fake. I was trying to convince other people of something I couldn’t fully convince myself of. Not because I didn’t believe the argument. I did. But fear has a way of sitting on top of what you know and pressing down until you can’t feel it anymore. I was scared. And all I could think about was my family. How am I going to provide? So I stopped writing. I couldn’t say anything that felt true, so I said nothing.
What happened next was fast. The anxiety that had been building for months collapsed into something heavier. Within a week and a half, maybe two, I went from functioning but struggling to barely being able to operate. That’s not an exaggeration. It was a deep, sudden sadness I had never experienced. The kind where people can see it on you. My wife could see it. My friends could see it. I couldn’t hide it even if I wanted to.
And underneath the sadness, there was this voice. You know the one. Maybe it was performance anxiety, maybe imposter syndrome, maybe just the accumulated weight of getting let go from my prior job and never fully processing it. Was it because I wasn’t good enough? Was it because I wasn’t as good as I thought? Was it because I am not worth it? Those questions don’t wait for a convenient time.
The worst of it came in the middle to end of December. I would have to stop whatever I was doing and go somewhere to cry. Not the kind of cry you have when something sad happens and your eyes get wet. I mean the kind of crying that comes from having nothing left. Emptiness. Begging God for mercy. Begging Him to take it away.
But the worst, the thing that still sits with me, was playing with my six-year-old son and feeling nothing. The things that bring me the most joy in my life, my family, my children, and I felt empty. Something was missing. I had forgotten the emotional memory of happiness. Not that I couldn’t remember being happy at some point. I could recall the observation of it, like watching a video of someone else’s life. But the feeling itself, that thing where you remember a moment and your chest fills with it again, that was gone. I could not feel it. For a season, the emotional recall just wasn’t there.
I thought about going to a psychiatrist, about medication, just anything that could make the empty pain stop. But for me, it didn’t feel right. I felt like I needed to go through this differently. I needed to treat my mind, my soul, my spirit, and for me the answer wasn’t pharmaceuticals (I want to be clear: sometimes the miracle comes in the form of pharmaceuticals, I am not advocating against it. But for me that was not the answer). Instead I started therapy, prayer, and being openly vulnerable. But the thing that actually carried me through that season wasn’t a technique or a framework. It was people and faith.
My compadre, my son’s godfather, called me every few days. Not to fix anything. Not to give advice. Just to check on me and pray with me. Every few days, consistently. Even in the middle of his own life and his own weight to carry.
My friend Shawn came to my house one night after a long day at work. I had asked him to come because I was in a bad place, and he came. He came to pray with me. That’s it. He showed up.
My mother-in-law saw that I wasn’t myself. She didn’t ask what was wrong, in the way people sometimes do when they want the short answer. She came to me, asked if she could pray for me, put her hands over my head, and prayed. She prayed deeply. I don’t know how long it was, maybe an hour, maybe more, maybe less. It doesn’t matter. She prayed and I wept.
And my wife. I don’t know how to write about her role in this without underselling it. She was dealing with her own things. She always is, because that’s life when you have a family and responsibilities and a husband who just fell apart. But she gave me space when I needed it and checked on me when I didn’t ask for it. Day after day, the same steady assurance. “We’re going to be okay.” She kept saying it when I couldn’t feel it.
Everyone was telling me things would be okay. Every reassurance bounced off. I heard the words but couldn’t absorb them. My wife, my compadre, friends, my mother-in-law and so many others, all saying the same thing, and I couldn’t feel any of it. So I had to make a choice. Am I going to believe my emotions in the moment, or am I going to choose to trust the people who love me? The people telling me that things are not as bad as they feel, that life is not as dark as it looks from where I’m standing?
I chose to trust them. I chose to trust God. Not because I felt hope in that moment. I didn’t. But they were telling me the hope was there, that I just wasn’t able to see it. And looking back now, I understand something that I couldn’t see then. They were the hope. My putting my trust in God, my trust in the people who love me, that was the hope. Not a feeling. Not a breakthrough moment. A decision to stop believing my fear and start believing my faith. That was the turning point.
A few weeks into this, something peculiar happened. God has a way of placing things in your path when you need them.
I had met a guy named Jimmy at a networking meeting. He’d invited me for coffee. On the day we were supposed to meet, I was at my worst. My wife asked, “Do you think it’s okay for you to meet with this guy in the state of mind you’re in right now?” She could see how bad it was. But something in me said I needed to go. Something pushed me. I don’t know how else to explain it other than I felt like the meeting was supposed to happen.
So I went. And I was honest with him. “I am not OK.” I even told him, “I am not in the state of mind to be here, but something told me, pushed me, to come meet with you.” I started tearing up, in a bar, in front of a dude I barely know his name. At the end of our conversation, I told Jimmy, “Hey man, if you don’t want to ever meet me again, I understand, because this was probably weird.”
We’ve met several times since.
Here’s what happened in that conversation. While I sat there, blind to anything beyond the career identity I’d been clinging to, Jimmy listened to me talk about my work, my career, everything I’d done. We talked about our shared faith, our struggles. And towards the end of the meeting, he named something about who I really am professionally that I had never seen, never considered, and could not remotely believe about myself. Something that didn’t match the label I’d been carrying for years.
My first reaction was rejection. That’s not what I am. Who am I to call myself that?
But the seed was planted. And I couldn’t shake it. Here was someone who barely knew me, someone smart and insightful, who had the ability to point and name something that I had never seen before. There is something that happens when a near-stranger sees you more clearly than you’ve ever seen yourself. It doesn’t feel like advice. It feels like being uncovered, like someone pulled back a curtain you didn’t know was there and showed you a version of yourself you’d never met. It’s disorienting. And it stays with you. That seed is still growing. I’m not ready to tell that full story yet, but it changed the direction of my thinking in ways I’m only now starting to understand.
My wife asked me something a few days ago. “Why do you feel that this is all on you? Why do you put so much pressure on yourself to have to be the one to do?”
We’ve had versions of that conversation before. I just tend to go back to this belief that if I can’t provide, everything falls apart. She knows that about me. But this time she pressed into it, and we walked through the exercise together. What’s the worst that could happen? Really, the absolute worst?
And the answer was: we’re still standing, we’re still here, we’re still blessed. Our kids are healthy. We fight together. The worst case scenario… we start over. But we do so together.
It is curious, and honestly sad, how many marriages fall apart through the pressures of life while others crystallize and become unbreakable. I am just glad mine is the latter.
The “fear” is gone. Someone once said “faith and fear can’t coexist,” so I am choosing to stand in faith. I still have days where the anxiety shows up and presses down on what I know to be true. But something shifted. I accepted that I am not in control, as if I ever was. What I had before was a facade of control, and this season stripped it away. All I actually have is the ability to do everything I can today and pray that tomorrow is better.
You see, we want to think that we are going through something difficult because we are being prepared for something greater, because “God has something on the other side.” But honestly, many times that isn’t the case. Many times there isn’t a higher peak to climb. Yes, there is something greater on the other side, for those who believe. But what if what you find on the other side is just Him? What if God doesn’t provide the “blessing”?
One thing I had to accept was, I will be OK even if I don’t get to climb that peak. Because in reality, the highest peak I achieved with no effort, and that achievement guarantees that in the long run, come what may, I will be OK. Through all of this, I have learned that my greatest peak was a greater reliance on God.
I would love to end this with a climactic assurance that everything is fine and that this will be awesome from here on. The reality is I’m still in process. I haven’t arrived at some neat conclusion. The anxiety hasn’t completely dissipated, though it’s lighter than it was. I’ve been praying more consistently than I ever had. I’m starting to own this new professional identity, slowly, the way you break in shoes that fit but don’t feel familiar yet.
I didn’t write this because I have answers. I wrote it because I spent four months silent and the silence was starting to become its own kind of lie.
There are a lot of people out there right now feeling what I felt. Watching the AI headlines, questioning your relevance, wondering if what you’ve built professionally still matters. Afraid to say it out loud because everyone else seems to have it figured out. If you don’t take anything else from this, please take this: don’t go through it alone. Seek help. Talk to someone. Let the people who love you in.
You are not alone. And the people around you, the ones who keep showing up and keep telling you it’s going to be okay? Trust them. Even when you can’t feel it. Especially when you can’t feel it.
As for me, I stopped standing still. That’s enough for now.