I burned out at 24.
Not the kind of tired where you sleep and wake up fine. The kind where you wake up and just stare at the ceiling and feel absolutely nothing. No motivation, no excitement, no sense of direction. Just empty. Like something inside quietly switched off without telling you.
And the worst part is i was proud of myself right before it happened.
I was working long hours, sleeping less, skipping meals, telling myself this is what it takes. Every time someone asked how i was doing i said busy like it was a badge of honour. Because that is what we were taught right. The grind is the goal. Sleep is for people who are not serious. Rest is something you earn after you make it.
Nobody told me that you could work yourself into the ground and still have nothing to show for it except a broken body and a tired mind.
The hustle culture thing is everywhere now. Social media is full of it. Wake up at 4am. No days off. Sacrifice everything. And i get it, the idea sounds powerful. It sounds like discipline and strength. But a lot of it is just noise from people performing productivity for an audience while quietly falling apart behind the screen.
Real life is not a motivational video.
I know people who hustled for years and ended up sick, alone, estranged from their kids, missing funerals and birthdays for work that never loved them back. And society looks at those people and still calls them dedicated. We romanticise the sacrifice without asking what was actually lost.
Hard work is real and necessary. I still believe that. But there is a difference between working hard with purpose and just staying busy because stopping feels like failure. A lot of people are running and do not even remember what they were running towards.
Rest is not laziness. Taking a break does not mean you gave up. Protecting your peace is not weakness. These are things nobody says loud enough.
You are not a machine. You were not put here just to produce and perform until you collapse.
The grind will always be there. But you only get one body, one mind and one life.
At some point you have to ask yourself if the hustle is building your life or just consuming it.
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