03/10/2026
You get back from the holiday and within four days you're exactly where you started.
It isn't because you rested badly.
Take two women with the same job, the same kids, the same week. One of them carries constant low-grade pressure and the other doesn't. What separates them is almost never what's on the to-do list.
It's the tracking. The anticipating. The adjusting before anything has actually happened. When you've been the capable one long enough, responsibility stops being something you pick up and put down — it just runs, underneath everything, and nobody ever asked you to do it. You knew how, so off you went. For years that was an asset.
Then it turns into a default with no off switch. Which is why the tiredness never matches the workload, and why doing less only helps at the edges. The holiday took away the triggers. The operating system came home in your suitcase.
Full piece is on my website. Link in bio.