Not Overworked, Just Nowhere to Put It Down

Some of the most tired people I have known were not overworked. They just had nowhere to put anything down.

It is a particular kind of tiredness. It comes from holding things in for so long that you have stopped noticing you are doing it.

It starts small. You mention something difficult and it does not land the way you needed it to. So the next time you say less. Then less again. And somewhere in there you stop bringing it up at all, because you have quietly decided that nobody quite understands, and explaining it properly costs more than carrying it.

Meanwhile work keeps adding to it. The credit that went elsewhere. The decision taken without you in the room. The year you delivered under conditions nobody acknowledged.

None of it is dramatic. So none of it gets said.

That is the part I would want people to notice. Not the crisis. The accumulation.

I did this myself for a long time before I understood what it was costing me.

You do not need to be in trouble to want an hour where you say the whole of it out loud, to someone who is not going to judge a word of it and will not repeat any of it.