My label printer at work died at 4:45pm on a Friday and I ended up drawing labels by hand
My label printer at the warehouse quit on me at 4:45pm on a Friday, right as I was trying to get 300 boxes out the door for a Monday truck. I had pulled the whole shipping crew off their normal pick lines to help, so there were 6 of us standing around a dead machine with a flashing red light. I ended up printing the last 60 labels on plain paper and taping them on by hand, which took almost two hours. What got me was how fast my brain switched gears, like it was kind of a relief to just do something with my hands instead of babysitting a screen. I keep a sketchbook at home that I have not opened in maybe 5 weeks because work eats all my energy. Does anyone have a trick for keeping a hobby alive when your job leaves you fried?
Is it really that big of a deal though? You lost a printer on a Friday, grabbed some paper and tape, and got the boxes out the door. That's called solving a problem, not some turning point where your brain woke up. People have been taping labels on boxes forever, the machine just does it faster. And the sketchbook thing, five weeks is nothing. Half the guys I know haven't touched their garage project since spring and they're fine. Sounds more like you had a rough afternoon and now you're reading way too much into it.