There was a time I couldn’t name why my work felt heavy.
On paper, it was good work.
Necessary work.
Stabilizing work.
Systems ran.
People were paid.
Institutions didn’t collapse.
I told myself I was helping.
And in many ways, I was.
But something in me kept tightening—quietly—like a muscle that never got to rest.
The image that finally came to me wasn’t modern.
It was ancient.
I realized I felt like one of Pharaoh’s slave masters.
Not Pharaoh.
Not the architect of the system.
But the one tasked with making it function.
The one responsible for quotas, continuity, output.
The one translating pressure into process.
The one ensuring the bricks were made—whether or not the straw was there.
That realization didn’t come with accusation.
It came with grief.
I never intended harm.
Neither did most of the people beside me.
We were skilled.
Thoughtful.
Often kind.
We believed—honestly—that efficiency was mercy.
That continuity was care.
That keeping the system running was the same as protecting the people inside it.
And for a long time, that belief held.
Until my body broke the illusion.
A glioma did something no framework ever could.
It stopped time.
Not metaphorically—physically.
Suddenly, continuity wasn’t virtuous.
It was indifferent.
The system kept running without me.
The dashboards refreshed.
The workflows completed.
And for the first time, I could see clearly:
I hadn’t been building freedom.
I’d been maintaining function.
This wasn’t a moral failure.
It was a positional one.
I wasn’t evil.
I wasn’t careless.
I was located inside a system designed to preserve itself.
And my role—however well-intentioned—was to translate upstream pressure into downstream compliance.
That’s what Pharaoh’s system always needed.
Not monsters.
Managers.
I don’t write this to accuse my former peers.
Many of them are still doing good work under impossible constraints.
I write this because I finally understand why my spirit resisted.
Why leadership framed as efficiency felt hollow.
Why continuity without responsibility felt corrosive.
Why “just doing my job” began to feel like a lie I couldn’t carry anymore.
The Exodus story isn’t about villains and heroes.
It’s about systems that outgrow the humanity they were meant to serve.
It’s about people waking up inside roles that no longer fit the truth they’ve come to see.
And it’s about the cost of that waking.
I didn’t leave because the work was hard.
I left because I could no longer pretend that keeping the bricks moving
was the same as caring for the people carrying them.
Some systems don’t need better managers.
They need fewer bricks.
And some awakenings don’t arrive as clarity.
They arrive as sorrow.