29-year-old engineer constantly quiet-quits his job every few months, can't summon energy: 'I can perform competence indefinitely, but I can’t manufacture investment'

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JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
May 5, 2026 9:00 PM EDT

Do you ever get burned out at your job?

Maybe it happens to you every now and again, and you have to learn how to roll with the punches. You go through periods of working really hard, and then it all comes crashing down, and you need a rest. You've gotten used to this ebb and flow, but what you really need is a more sustainable schedule. You don't want to keep existing in this boom and bust cycle; you want to be able to live your life with enthusiasm and pep when you get out of bed. Sure, this isn't going to happen every day, but you hope that you can summon that at least more days than not. But when you're working every day, full-time, things tend to add up. The hours pile and pile, and you're left feeling crushed under their weight. Is there any way around this? 

That's the situation this worker found themselves in when they were a few years into their career. For a certain reason, they just couldn't find sustained energy for their job. They could do the tasks as they arose, but they couldn't find the enthusiasm to keep it going. They wondered if this was a common thing for workers or if they had a special case that needed to be investigated further. 

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  • A stressed woman sits at her desk
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • I just stopped going to my job one day and I don't fully understand why
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  • Hello everyone, I (29M) studied aerospace engineering, my last job was at a major airline, and before that I worked at a few other large companies. By any reasonable measure, things have gone well. Stable jobs, respectable positions, no obvious failures.
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  • We all have different relationships with our workplace, and don't always get the perfect career. But we do have to keep showing up every day, which can be a difficult task all on its own. This is why community is important. We need to share information and stories with each other to make ourselves feel less alone. That's what this worker was doing, by opening up a little about their own relationship to work. You never know what kind of discussion it's going to spark or how it's going to make you feel. So keep reading for all the details of this story and see if you relate to any of it. Then let us know what you think in the comments. 

  • But I've walked away more than once. Not because something blew up there was no conflict, no breakdown, no story I can point to. Just a quiet internal disconnection, and then I'm gone.
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  • What I keep noticing is that the bigger and more "prestigious" the environment, the faster this happens. These places function well. People are competent, professional, things get done. And somehow that's exactly the problem. Everything runs so smoothly that it starts to feel like a performance one I can participate in without ever actually being in it.
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  • A burned out woman sits in front of a laptop
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • I know my lines, I hit my marks, I don't cause friction. But there's no part of me that believes any of it matters. What makes it hard to talk about is that this isn't depre s on in the classic sense, and it's not
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  • burnout from being overworked. It's more like the opposite of burnout a kind of over-clarity. Once you understand how a system works, once you can see the scaffolding, it becomes. difficult to feel anything but detached from it. The map replaces the territory.
    via ImpossibleTennis8282
  • The honest pattern seems to be this: I can perform competence indefinitely, but I can't manufacture investment. And at some point the gap between those two things becomes unbearable, not dramatically, just quietly. Withdrawal stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like the only non-dishonest option.
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  • I'm genuinely uncertain whether this is avoidance dressed up in philosophical clothing, or something more like a real incompatibility with conventional structures. Probably some of both.
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  • A row of burnt matches, symbolizing burnout
    via Anne Nygård
  • Has anyone else hit this wall where nothing is objectively wrong, but you still can't make yourself stay?
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boss antiwork workplace-stories job bosses work coworkers working bad bosses toxic-work-environment
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