Burnout

You finish a full day of work. You could list what you did. But it passed without registering — as if you watched it from a slight distance.

Something you used to care about doesn't generate a response anymore. Not a decision to stop caring — the response just isn't there.

You're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. You sleep a reasonable amount. You wake up tired.

You keep going not because you want to but because you're afraid of what stops if you stop. The work is being sustained by anxiety rather than drive.

People ask how you are. 'Fine' is the answer. It requires no thought — not because it's accurate but because accurate would take more.

Your threshold for difficulty has dropped. Things that used to be routine now produce resistance. You can't tell when the drop happened.

You think about quitting regularly. Immediately after, you think through the consequences. You stay. The loop repeats.

A full weekend passes without work obligations. Monday arrives and the gap hasn't changed. Rest isn't restoring what it used to restore.

You're more irritable than you recognise as yourself. Small things produce responses that feel proportionate in the moment and excessive in retrospect.

You've become more cynical about something you weren't cynical about before. It feels like realism but it might be protection.

Effort no longer translates to a sense of progress. You put in work and feel no forward movement. The feedback loop is broken.

You're not planning things the way you used to. Medium-term thinking feels effortful. The future has contracted to the near term.