Four years ago, my life was exactly where I wanted it: I was working as a senior editor at a major glossy magazine. My first young adult novel had just been published by Simon & Schuster. I was training for a marathon and going on several Tinder dates a week with men who were just as accomplished and driven as I was. I lived in a sunny two-bedroom Brooklyn apartment by myself and was planning a 30th birthday party that was going to double as a major fundraising event. Double SoulCycle classes were frequent. I would never say no — not to a date, not to an assignment, not to anything.I loved checking things off my to-do list; downtime on the subway was often spent listing my accomplishments to myself, as if in prayer, feeling so proud of myself for all I could fit into a day. I loved updating my social media, sharing how I would go from workouts to work to a low-lit wine bar. What I didn’t show: the weekends spent in bed, too exhausted to do anything but watch the light play across the hardwood floors. The feeling that I was on a treadmill that was going faster and faster — and that eventually, I would have to fall off.Bottom line: I was a victim of burnout, the scary-sounding buzzword that pops up frequently in career articles. Statistics support the fact that it’s a real thing: According to an oft-cited Forbes article, more and more millennial women feel burned out by 30. Research from the University of Kansas in 2015 backs up the observation; in fact, in the study of journalists, 67% of women said they wanted to leave the profession — as opposed to 55% of men. And millennials are especially susceptible: We're expected to be on call at all hours, we feel guilty about taking vacation, and we are surrounded by twentysomethings who sit as CEOs of corporations that make billions. We know all this.But while we know, intellectually, what burnout is, it's hard to know what burnout feels like. I remember the confusing mix of emotions I was experiencing just as I was on the cusp of burning out. I was excited and freaked out and grateful for opportunities and so, so tired. I began dropping the ball on little things: Assignments would be late, emails wouldn’t be answered. I remember getting one email from my boss on a Sunday afternoon when I was at my computer. It was a nice email, congratulating me on a recent work accomplishment. It would have taken less than a minute to respond. But I couldn’t. Instead, I crawled underneath my covers and fell asleep. It was as if my body and mind were going on strike: I was going to take a break, whether I wanted to or not.And that's exactly what happened. A month later, I walked to the subway and realized my mounting to-do list would be impossible to conquer. It was as if all the motivation had dripped out of me. I was exhausted and drained and just done. And weirdly, in one of those moves that happens when the Universe is pushing you to do the exact thing you won't do yourself, I got laid off that afternoon.