The Sunday dread that has nothing to do with Monday's calendar.

The big win that lands and you feel nothing. Waking up rested and still heavy by 10am.

Everything feels slightly off — not wrong enough to quit, not right enough to stop draining you.

You take a vacation and come back to the same weight.

You set boundaries and the exhaustion finds new gaps.

You hire help and somehow end up more depleted — because now you're managing energy you don't have for a structure you didn't design.

You're not tired from the work.

You're tired from carrying a system that doesn't fit.

Rest heals depletion. It doesn't fix friction.

Friction between what you're doing and what you're built for.

Friction between the role you're playing and the work that actually matters. Friction between the system you inherited and the person you've become.

You didn't design this container. It accumulated — from early client expectations, from the first team you hired, from what seemed to work before you knew what you're building.

Now you're operating inside assumptions you never questioned.

You don't need more rest. You need a different structure.

What would change if you stopped managing the symptoms — and looked at the container?

Trenton Jackson

Trenton Jackson builds and writes at the intersection of human systems, business architecture, and design.