You sat down to work… and stared blankly at the screen. Again.
There are emails to answer, meetings to prep for, deadlines looming—but your brain feels like it’s buffering. Your body’s in the chair, but everything else? Nowhere near ready. And somewhere deep down, a thought slinks in: “Maybe I’m just lazy.” Or even “Maybe I’m just not good enough.”
I’m here to tell you—you’re not lazy and you are good enough.
The truth is that you’re exhausted. And no, “lazy” and “exhausted” are not the same thing. The truth is also that you are good enough…good enough to be doing what resonates with your soul, not with what the world around tells you that you have to do, what you’re “supposed” to do. And that you’re supposed to pretend to be happy and fulfilled doing it.
We were taught to confuse lazy and exhaustion…to equate insane speeds of movement and thought with being good enough.
Our work culture loves a binary: you’re either productive or you’re failing. You’re either crushing goals or letting people down.
We learned to feel shame the moment we slow down. We apologize for needing rest. We call ourselves names when our focus fractures. We are left with no choice but to check emails and take meetings when we’re supposedly on vacation. We think if we’re not performing at full throttle, as defined by our society, that something must be wrong with us.
But here’s the thing: If the problem were laziness, rest would fix it. If the problem were that you weren’t good enough, you wouldn’t have been hired to begin with. And none of these things are true. Because that drag you’re feeling isn’t about motivation. It’s about depletion.
Exhaustion is not failure—it’s feedback.
It’s your body and mind whispering, then pleading, then screaming that you’ve passed the edge of sustainable. That you’ve been spinning so long you forgot what stillness even feels like.
I’ve seen it in countless clients:
- Brilliant team leads blaming themselves for burnout
- Project managers calling themselves “scatterbrained” when they’re just over-capacity
- Creatives convinced they’ve “lost their spark” when really, they’re running on fumes
This isn’t a personal flaw. It’s a system failure. And here’s something I’ll be no one’s ever said to you before and actually meant it: You are not the system.
So many of us were taught to move like machines, from the moment we go through school where we’re forced to memorize facts so we can pass tests, so schools keep getting funded. Never mind how many children endure bullying, or are treated as “lesser” because the way the schools “teach” don’t align with how their souls and minds best learn.
You’re not a machine. You’re a human. And humans get tired, especially when navigating workplaces that reward output but ignore wellbeing. Or even worse, say that that support wellbeing when the truth of everyday is that every team and individual is expected to do more than a single team or individual should even be asked to.
If you’re exhausted, it’s not because you’re weak. It’s because you’ve been strong for too long, without enough support. And that’s not something to feel guilty about. It’s something to listen to.
What if we measured something different?
What if value wasn’t tied to how much you could do, but how aligned you were in doing it?
What if rest wasn’t seen as a break from success, but part of it?
Because here’s the truth:
- Slowness is not laziness.
- Silence is not apathy.
- Needing rest doesn’t make you broken. It makes you alive.
If no one’s said it lately, let me say it now:
You’re doing your best.
You’re not too much.
You’re not too little.
And you’re not alone.
I built Crispy Rose for people like you. The quietly capable, the soul-tired, the ones still trying to hold it all together. If you’re ready to build a better way to work, one that doesn’t bury you under expectations… I’m here.
“Structure should support people, not bury them.”
– Christine Rose
Let’s make work human again.
I’ll be writing more about this in upcoming posts—practical steps, quiet truths, and a little fire.
If you want to walk this path with me, follow along here and leave your own thoughts in the comments. Because we can work differently. And we don’t have to do it alone.
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