Category: Burnout
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Why I Don’t Know How to Relax on My Days Off
I stopped going into days off with anticipation and started going into them with a quiet, resistant tension I couldn’t quite name. There was a time when the idea of a day off meant…
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What It’s Like When Every Mistake Feels Like a Moral Failure
The fear isn’t getting something wrong—it’s what the wrongness is assumed to mean. I remember when mistakes felt contained. You missed a detail. You misunderstood a requirement. You adjusted and moved on. There might…
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How Ambiguity in My Role Made Everything Feel High-Stakes
It wasn’t that the work was difficult. It was that I never knew what exactly “right” looked like — and that uncertainty made everything feel heavier than it should have. I didn’t realize quite…
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What It’s Like When You’re the One Everyone Vents To
It wasn’t a title any official document gave me. It was something that emerged quietly, in Slack threads and hallway moments and late-afternoon sighs that weren’t meant for me but landed there anyway. I…
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Why I Struggle to Say No Without Feeling Like I’m Failing
The word “no” used to be simple. Now it feels like a judgment on my worth rather than a boundary on my time. There was a time when saying “no” felt like a pause…
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Why I Can’t Relax in a Workplace That’s Always Trying to Bond
The closer the culture tries to pull us, the more guarded I notice myself becoming. I didn’t always feel tense around workplace bonding. Early on, it felt occasional and optional—something that happened naturally when…
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How Workload Creep Became the New Normal
It didn’t start with overwhelm. It started with one extra ask that didn’t feel like too much — and then another, and another, until “too much” became invisible. I remember the moment before it…
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Why I Started Faking Confidence Just to Be Taken Seriously
There was a point when confidence stopped being an expression of certainty and became a performance I felt obligated to put on. I didn’t choose to fake confidence all at once. It started as…
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What It Feels Like When You’re Trusted With Everything Except Decisions
Being entrusted with tasks that matter, but never with the authority to shape what “good” even means. I didn’t notice when it first started — the subtle distinction between being trusted with work and…
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How Recognition Culture Made Me Feel Invisible
The more recognition became formalized, the harder it was to tell if anyone actually noticed the work. I remember when recognition felt incidental. A comment in passing. A quiet acknowledgment after something went well.…