I started doing dev work at 17. Initially, it was the most fun and productive stage of growth in my life. After switching companies, I started taking on a lot of responsibility and stress. I didn't know how to communicate when it was too much. I was very ambitious and studied programming for hours outside of work every day. The projects assigned to me began to feel meaningless. At this time, I was also in a long distance relationship. By age 19 my mental health was absolutely destroyed. After quitting my job, I couldn't even open an editor for months. It took a lot of healing before I could even think about writing another line of code.

Although I've somewhat recovered from burnout and depression, I still have lasting symptoms that haven't gone away.

My memory in particular has not recovered. I used to memorize hundreds of digits on pi-day just for fun. My mental energy is not the same, and everything (things what were previously easy) continue to be challenging.

I'm giving it time. I'm pretty happy now, but I miss the raw intellectual abilities.