"Burnout demands honest payment"

My laptop hummed like a small appliance even on weekends, and coffee had stopped tasting like coffee. I used to brag about two-hour sleep nights and back-to-back sprints, fingers sticky with energy drink residue. The code still compiled, but my inbox grew teeth and my spine learned the shape of a chair.

Burnout did not arrive as thunder. It came as a slow fog in meetings, a tightening at the base of my skull, the way I began canceling dinners without asking why. Recovery began with tiny boundaries: turning off notifications, walking to the river at noon and feeling breeze on my face, telling my manager I could not take another sprint. Those small acts felt like crimes at first.

Burnout is not a season. It is a bill that comes due.