When work is asked to prove you’re special

There is a point where success stops doing what it used to do.

The work still functions.
Revenue is steady.
People rely on you.
From the outside, things look fine.

But the relief is brief now.

Each milestone delivers a short exhale, then expires.
Another target quietly replaces it.

What’s often happening here is subtle.

The work has taken on a second job.

It’s no longer just a way of creating value.
It has become a way of proving worth.

As long as the venture performs, it testifies on your behalf.
That you’re legitimate.
That you made the right choices.
That you’re different from the people who didn’t make it.

For a while, this works.

Momentum feels necessary.
High stakes feel motivating.
Letting up feels dangerous.

Not because the business would fail, but because something else might.

The strain starts when the work is asked to keep answering a question it was never designed to answer.

No amount of success can finally settle it.

So the stakes stay high.
The pressure remains.
The proving never quite ends.

From the outside, this looks like drive.
From the inside, it feels like carrying something that never gets set down.

The issue here isn’t ambition.
And it isn’t burnout.

It’s asking a structure to do a job it cannot do.

Seeing that clearly doesn’t tell you what to do next.

But it does change the question.