Something I don't understand about myself is how I can get really excited about an idea, think about it intensely and even build-out part of it one day and then the next day I'm almost completely disinterested in it, and in extreme cases sort of disgusted by the idea of working on it.
It's very weird.
When this happens it's almost like upon reflection it's a bad idea, or something that seems like I was deluding myself into thinking it's valuable and when this feeling hits I feel really stupid or silly for thinking it was worth the effort I was putting into it.
What's very weird about this is that the feeling isn't the result of any actual conscious evaluation. It's not the product of negative feedback or realizing that there's something fundamentally wrong or evil about the idea. It's never even a matter of some experiment proving the idea is flawed (as far as I can remember), it's just the bad feeling in my gut when I try to work on it.
I can't say for sure whether or not this feeling has ever been right about anything. I can't recall an idea that turned-out to be actually bad after experiencing this reaction to continuing to work on it. That's not evidence against it's accuracy, because there's lots of projects I haven't finished (yet), so I can't say with any confidence that some of the ideas that this feeling applies to turned-out to be good in spite of this reaction. Off-hand I can't think of a project I completed with good results that experienced this sensation at some point along their road to completion. That's just as likely the result of my faulty memory as it could be of things actually having gone that way.
It's all subjective, based on no evidence; certainly not factual.
I guess the smart thing to do would be to start keeping track of when this feeling slams-down and note what idea or project it applies to so I can review the history of projects that reach completion (or at least get released to the wild) and see if they ever hit this wall. Then I could have some evidence on which to base a decision about how seriously I consider this feeling.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026