An IT Odyssey

 Twenty–five years ago, he arrived with a spine full of sunrise. His eyes carried the reckless optimism of someone who believed effort was sacred, that sincerity could negotiate with destiny. The building received him without emotion. It had seen thousands like him—young men carrying invisible suitcases filled with hunger.

He offered his name.
The system offered him a login.

And thus began his long conversation with urgency.

Deadlines became his first language. They stood behind him like silent supervisors, tapping his shoulder with cold fingers. Targets hovered in front of him like distant, indifferent stars—forever visible, never intimate. He ran toward them with the obedience of faith, not knowing whether arrival would bring fulfillment or simply another horizon.

Stress entered his life quietly, without ceremony.

It sat beside him during lunches he forgot to eat. It traveled home with him in crowded buses and silent cabs. It slept next to him, whispering unfinished tasks into his half–dreams. His mind became a room where windows no longer opened fully.

Yet every morning, he returned.

Because effort, once begun, becomes a form of captivity.

Five years passed. He was no longer new. The kindness of novelty had left him. Expectations replaced curiosity. His inbox multiplied like an unchecked prophecy. Each email carried urgency disguised as politeness.

“Gentle reminder.”
“Kindly expedite.”
“Critical priority.”

Words that looked harmless but carried the weight of quiet violence.

Tension settled into his shoulders like permanent weather. He learned to breathe shallowly, to exist efficiently. His laughter became shorter. His silences longer.

He discovered burnout not as an explosion—but as erosion.

It did not arrive dramatically. It arrived as absence.
The absence of excitement.
The absence of resistance.
The absence of self.

He would stare at the screen for long minutes, his fingers resting on the keyboard like birds too tired to migrate. Around him, the office hummed with fluorescent indifference. Everyone was running. Everyone was tired. No one stopped.

Ten years passed. Then fifteen.

He reinvented himself repeatedly, like a city rebuilding after silent wars. New technologies rose like unfamiliar gods, demanding fresh devotion. He learned them with humility and fear. Fear of being left behind. Fear of becoming obsolete. Fear of becoming invisible while still present.

He stayed late.

Night after night, long after the world outside had surrendered to rest, he remained beneath artificial light that never loved him, only tolerated him. The glow of the monitor became his second moon. His reflection in it looked increasingly like a stranger.

Sometimes, at 2:17 AM, he would pause—not out of rest, but out of exhaustion so complete it resembled peace.

He would ask himself questions he never answered.

Is this effort building me, or erasing me?

Yet he continued.

Because somewhere between responsibility and survival, he had lost the luxury of retreat.

Twenty years passed. Then twenty–five.

His hair had thinned. His patience had deepened. His dreams had become quieter, more practical. He was no longer chasing greatness. He was sustaining continuity.

He had survived thousands of deadlines.
He had endured countless targets.
He had negotiated endlessly with stress, tension, and the slow, invisible gravity of burnout.

He had given his youth not in sacrifice, but in installments.

And yet, he remained.

Not triumphant.
Not broken.

Tempered.

One evening, after completing another urgent deliverable that would be forgotten by morning, he shut down his system. The screen went dark. For a moment, it reflected his face—lined, tired, but unmistakably alive.

Twenty–five years, and still he was here.

Not because the journey was easy.
But because he had learned the quiet, unfashionable art of endurance.

He stood, collected his belongings, and walked toward the exit. The glass doors opened, then closed behind him, as they always had.

Indifferent.

But he knew something the building did not.

He was never just an employee.

He was a man who had carried fire in his hands for twenty–five years—and learned, somehow, not to let it consume his soul.