So many people are pivoting or leaving their jobs right now and can't fully articulate why.

I think it's this: people are tired of pretending.

And most jobs require a level of pretending that asks too much. We've become so used to doing it that we don't even notice anymore; it's just the water we swim in.

The pandemic cracked something open that has only widened since. The old arrangement — you pretend, we pay you — used to feel like the best available option. Not anymore.

And suddenly, the cost of pretending isn't worth it.

UPDATE: The responses here encouraged me to explore this idea more deeply. I wrote about pretending, its relationship to burnout, and the disconnect between work and people's actual lives in an essay called The Disconnect: substack.com/home/post/…