Some days it’s not that I can’t think. It’s that I can’t finish a single thought.
One thing reminds me of another. That triggers a task. The task brings up a deadline. The deadline makes me check something, which opens a new loop.
None of them complete.
Eventually I just sit there, cursor blinking, kettle cooling, mind full, screen blank.
That’s a stack overflow.
Not the website. The failure mode.
Recursive Thought Without Exit Conditions
It usually starts with something small:
- Did I email them back?
- Should I change how I’m storing notes?
- What happens if I lose the backup drive?
From there it spirals. The system keeps calling itself. No return. No result. Just more function calls stacked on top of each other until there’s no headroom left.
This isn’t anxiety. It’s logic gone wrong.
Execution Halts, Not Because You’re Tired, But Because the System Can’t Resolve
Most people interpret this as procrastination or laziness.
But if you’re stuck in a recursive loop, you can’t act. There’s no output. Just circular processing and rising heat.
The correct response isn’t to push through.
It’s to interrupt the loop.
That might mean:
- Writing down every open process
- Changing environment
- Doing something tactile, not intellectual
- Letting the stack unwind by not feeding it more input
You don’t fix it by thinking harder.
You fix it by clearing space.
The Mind as a Runtime Environment
Brains aren’t infinite. They have limits.
If your stack frame is already full of half-loaded stressors, every new decision, every new piece of input, just crashes the session.
Sometimes you just need to halt execution.
Not because you’re weak.
But because you’ve hit the upper limit of concurrent processes.
And even resilient systems crash if no one sets the depth limit.