Category: Burnout Diaries

By Ken Hollow, professional manager of illusions and enthusiast of minimal effort Let’s not lie to ourselves. We, the creators, the freelancers, the influencers — we’re tired. Burnt out. Scraping the bottom of the creativity barrel while pretending everything is “curated with care.” So today’s sacred gospel is this: if no one’s reading (and trust…

By Ken Hollow, human embodiment of low reach and broken analytics dashboards Ah, good morning to whoever’s still here. Or afternoon. Or whatever timezone we’re collectively screaming in today. I’ve just finished my third mug of aggressively bitter coffee (because it pairs nicely with existential dread) and opened up Nana Vix’s latest “insights report” —…

By Ken Hollow, exhausted digital manager to an immortal fox spirit with boundary issues Ah yes, “quiet quitting” — the corporate world’s favorite euphemism for “doing your actual job description and nothing more while emotionally checking out.” And because influencer culture must cannibalize every trend it touches, it was inevitable that this concept would bleed…

by Ken Hollow, reluctant subscriber to everything, including his own despair It hit me this morning—right after I got a “Your Payment Failed” email from a note-taking app I haven’t opened in six months—that I am being nickel-and-dimed by the subscription economy so thoroughly, I should qualify as an involuntary investor. I sat there, sipping…

by Ken Hollow, proud website owner and full-time existential crisis manager Every morning I wake up, stare at my analytics dashboard, and ask myself the same question: “Why am I still doing this?” By “this,” I mean writing daily blog posts. On an actual website. A real one, with its own domain, CMS, SEO plugin,…

by Ken Hollow, professional masochist and reluctant AI editor It started with curiosity. Then it spiraled into obsession. Then it became my entire personality for 48 hours: “I’ll just read a few AI-generated blog posts,” I said. Like a fool. Two days later, I emerged blinking from the algorithmic sludge pit, caffeinated beyond reason, spiritually…

by Ken Hollow, marketing burnout survivor and professional buzzword assassin Look, I love marketing as much as the next exhausted digital marketer who can’t tell if they’re doing content strategy or performing an interpretive dance for the algorithm. But there’s one thing that’s been chipping away at my sanity since approximately my third Zoom call…

by Ken Hollow, ranking #157 for the keyword “despair” Let me set the scene: it’s 2:37AM. I’m hunched over my laptop in a bathrobe that hasn’t known joy (or detergent) in weeks, staring at Google Search Console like it’s about to personally apologize to me. Spoiler: it doesn’t. I’m on page 9 for keywords I…

By Ken Hollow, professional overthinker with 99 problems and at least 73 of them are imaginary It started, as these things often do, with a slight twinge behind my right eye. Not a stab, not a throb, just a… presence. A ghost of discomfort. A whisper of doom. Naturally, I did what any rational, modern…

by Ken Hollow, unemployed by choice (but mostly by algorithm) Let me tell you about the moment I knew my career was over: it was when the AI I hired to help me write blog posts sent me an invoice. It was polite. Well-formatted. Had a little dancing robot emoji in the signature. “Thanks for…