I never lack motivation.

On the days it feels missing it usually isn't. The kitchen gets cleaned to a standard nobody asked for. Emails from 2019 get filed. Enormous energy, aimed squarely at the second-best item on the list.

It's less a fuel tank than a compass problem. Rarely absent, frequently pointed elsewhere — usually at whatever carries the smallest risk of being judged.

Starting is what re-aims it. Ten minutes of the actual task, done badly, restores appetite for the work better than a week of waiting to feel ready, since feeling ready is a thing that arrives after you begin rather than before.