millenial safe space

I'm digging myself into a hole with my writing/creativity again. I don't know why or even how I keep doing this. I truly don't know. Am I expecting too much? Am I just too stressed and tired to be creative right now and I need to stop trying to force it? Is it the opposite, and I'm not working hard enough or forcing myself hard enough? Do I need to be more dedicated? Am I working on the wrong things?

I keep cycling back to telling myself that I should work on "something fun" or "for me" or "what I really want to work on" if whatever I've been trying is too hard but I so legitimately do not even know what such a thing would be. It's ALL hard. It's ALL beyond me.

Which kind of brings me back to the first thing. Maybe I don't have the spoons. Maybe the kind of rest and recovery I need to be able to write again cannot be found in 24 or 48 or 72 hours.

It didn't used to be like this. That's a very hard aspect of it for me. Very depressing. I know I can't be judging myself against a hypothetical and/or past me but it's just so tempting to be hard on myself.

I'm trying so hard to separate myself from expectations, to recognize that there are no lions chasing me, and to center myself in what I really want and what is enjoyable. Because why else would I do this. Every time I have that, though, it slips right away again.

But at the end of the day it probably shouldn't be this hard. I don't know what to do about that. Stop? Retire again? Retire for real? Give up? Hope that giving up is some sort of reverse psychology on myself, but recognizing it might not be?

Then it gets into, like, what is my identity without this, and what would I do without it, and why do I have these hang ups, and a lot of self-criticism from there.