Bell's palsy left Jamis Buck unable to smile fully for weeks — half a face frozen, expression trapped. He uses that as the image for **burnout**: working with half a heart while passion feels forced and ugly. ## Capistrano wound At 37signals he built Capistrano; DHH and Jason Fried gave him the project. Passion held three years. A planned Capistrano teaching series hit a conflict-of-interest stop from DHH (correct in hindsight). Felt like betrayal of "my baby." Passion collapsed into obligation. 2009: walked away from Capistrano, Net::SSH, SQLite bindings. Blog and Twitter later shut down too. ## Paralysis By 2013 even paid work froze. Simple Ruby bugs looked like walls of text. Avoidance (email, Kerbal Space Program) replaced coding. Shame spiral: hide weakness → lower output → more shame. Extra sabbatical and three months of small on-call tickets from supportive leadership were not enough. Productivity ~10% of prior peak. April 2014: left Basecamp — dream job, couldn't do the work. ## Recovery ~1 year off. First month: almost no computer. Creative experiments with spouse; maze book with Pragmatic; side code for fun returned gradually ("seedlings through char"). Then contracting / self-employment — not planned, but where smiles returned. ## Claim Burnout is not only overload. A single control wound can freeze passion even in ideal hours and kind bosses. Recovery needs undisturbed time, not powering through. Companion recognition piece: [[Avoiding the Trap]]. *Source: [To Smile Again](https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/to-smile-again-ae0ba9f2198c) — Jamis Buck, Signal v. Noise, 2016-03-28*