I burned out working from home and didn't notice for about eight months.

I've worked remotely since 2017, first as the only remote person on an office team, which is its own particular hell, then on a fully distributed team across five time zones, then hybrid, which turned out to combine the commute of the office with the isolation of home.

The burnout happened in year three. It didn't look like burnout. I never missed a deadline. What actually happened was that my working day quietly expanded to fill every hour I was awake, my only conversations had agendas, and I got to a point where a colleague asking for a quick call made me feel physically sick. Nobody saw any of it, because there was nobody in the room.

When I went looking for help, almost everything I found was one of two things: wellness content that told me to light a candle and be grateful for the flexibility, or productivity content that treated my exhaustion as a systems problem I could optimise my way out of. Neither engaged with the actual mechanics: that remote work removed the structures which used to protect me and handed me the job of rebuilding them, unpaid, on top of my actual job.

What this site is

Specific pain points, named plainly, with fixes that are boundary-shaped rather than attitude-shaped. Most of what's here is stuff I tried, plus what I've picked up from readers who wrote in about situations I hadn't been in myself.

I write it in the belief that remote work is, in some genuine ways, harder than working in an office, not despite its advantages but alongside them. You are doing the same job with a lot of the scaffolding removed. That's worth saying out loud, because being told you're lucky while you're struggling is its own small injury.

What this site is not

I'm not a therapist, a doctor, an HR professional or a lawyer. Nothing here is clinical or legal advice, and I won't pretend otherwise to sound more authoritative. If you're in crisis, or your situation involves discrimination, a contract, formal grievance, or medical leave entitlement, you need a qualified person: your GP, a licensed therapist, your employer's EAP, or an employment adviser. I'll say so every time it comes up.

I also don't sell anything. There's no course and no coaching. The newsletter is the whole business model for now, which mostly means I only write when I've got something worth sending.