Let me paint you a picture. It’s 2am. I’m wide-eyed, horizontal, and spiraling through every “what if” scenario like my brain’s running a bootleg Choose Your Own Apocalypse simulator. No amount of melatonin, meditation, or magnesium glycinate can fight off the heavyweight champ of the mental health world: rumination.
They say it’s depression’s #1 symptom. I say it’s like getting waterboarded with your own thoughts.
So yeah, I set my alarm for 8am, but surprise—my brain said, “Rise and catastrophize, king.” I was up by 7am, already pacing mental circles around politics, prepping, plans, and the weird TikTok rabbit holes that feel less like conspiracy and more like… contingency planning. Go ahead and search #winterboots or #globetok if you want to stare into the abyss with me. Or don’t. Ignorance was bliss before algorithms weaponized paranoia.
🐾 Walkies, Weewees, and Weight of the World
Cookies the dog, my wife, my kids, and I went for a walk—normal enough, right? Except the air felt like it was humming with tension. Like if the wind blew just right, you’d hear it whisper, “You’re not paranoid enough.” We walked, we talked about the future, and we tangoed around the elephant in the room—because the elephant’s wearing a red hat and yelling at the clouds.
Look, I’m not going to spiral in public (anymore). I’ve done enough yelling into the digital void. Y’all saw it. Some of you read it. 5,000 of you in under a month, and yet the silence is deafening. It’s like screaming at a stadium and hearing only the sound of your own reverb. Inspiring ghosts is exhausting.
So, I’m going dark. Not because I’ve lost hope. Because I want to protect the little bit of light I’ve built. Articles will still go up—but they’ll be under lock and key for now. Password protected. Invite-only. Because I need to say what I need to say without worrying if the NSA or Aunt Karen is screen-capping for receipts.
💪 Sweat Equity: No Free Lunch in the Universe
Tonight on the elliptical, my legs were screaming, my spirit was wheezing, and my brain whispered, “Step off. You’ve earned a break.” But that whisper is a liar. A saboteur. So I stayed. I worked out. I listened to Japanese lessons and gave myself something that, in this moment, might be more valuable than food or shelter—a distraction with purpose.
Because here’s the truth that slapped me in the face somewhere between “Konnichiwa” and “Yamete kudasai”:
🧠 The only person coming to save me…
…is the version of me that’s had enough of the BS.
📉 Want a better life?
Start sweating. Sacrifice. Because the universe doesn’t take IOUs—it wants skin in the game.
📈 You start to take care of yourself → you look better.
You look better → you feel better.
You feel better → you stop tolerating garbage.
Simple math. Brutal math. But honest math.
🔒 Final Thought Before I Ghost (Publicly)
I’m not burnt out on the challenge—I’m just exhausted from carrying the weight of becoming a version of me I haven’t fully met yet. That guy is cooler. Calmer. More confident. He doesn’t panic-scroll TikTok at midnight. He doesn’t ruminate. He acts.
But he didn’t show up to save me. I had to crawl toward him. One sweaty step at a time.
📚 Book of the Day: “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter
You want real change? You’re gonna have to get uncomfortable. This book will slap your soft, modern, dopamine-chasing tendencies right out of you. It’s about embracing voluntary hardship to build grit, perspective, and purpose. Basically, it’s the gospel of this challenge in hardcover.
👉 Grab it on Amazon
🔗 TL;DR
I’m not quitting. I’m just cloaking.
I’ll still be sweating, writing, and building this better version of me—just… behind a digital velvet rope. If you’re watching from the sidelines, lurking, silently inspired, now’s your shot:
🎯 Speak up.
🎯 Show up.
🎯 Or don’t be surprised when the lights go out and the password comes in.
Join the movement before it vanishes into the digital shadows:
👉 The Discord Is Still Lit (For Now)
Catch you on the dark side.
Drew Karriker is a self-proclaimed professional tinkerer, self-experimentation enthusiast, and lifelong learner with an inability to sit still. A former nuclear engineer turned DevOps architect, he’s built a career (and a life) out of breaking things, fixing them, and then making them better.
Despite wrestling with ADHD, anxiety, and an unrelenting need to optimize everything, he transformed his career and life in just a few years—not because he’s special, but because he figured out how to turn obsession into execution. Now, he’s doing it again—publicly—one 100-day challenge at a time.
His past projects? Some were successes. Some flopped spectacularly. Each one left him a little wiser (and probably a little more caffeinated). Now, he’s on a mission to document his transformation—mind, body, career, and everything in between—so that others might pick up a thing or two along the way. Or at the very least, be entertained by the chaos.
Follow along at RewiredWithDrew.com and get inspired, get motivated, or just grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride.