I accidentally recorded my journey into burnout.

It happened when Kate, my oldest friend, sent me a voice message. We'd been playing phone tag and could never make our schedules of kids and work and life intersect.

So we started recording long, long, rambling messages to each other as we walked our respective dogs to respective dog parks.

As a result, there are a lot of weirdly placed pauses in these voice memos. One of us will have to cut a message short while the dog runs away or we're picking up a poo and have run out of hands.

In the beginning we spend a lot of time apologising - for being so busy that we can't meet up, for how long it's taken to reply to the last message, for how 'boring' our updates are. It got so bad that we had to call a ban on the word sorry.

Listening back to these messages now is quite the trip. In between the apologising, the barking and updates about the kids, there's a woman talking who I find it hard to recognise.

Often she's listing ailments: digestive issues, insomnia, a racing heart, a sense of dread. She casually - quite lightly - mentions how stress is affecting her ability to remember things. It's raw and unfiltered, burnout in real time.

It's telling that it was Kate I was leaving these messages for. We've been friends since birth (our mums were best friends). There are only a few people in the world I would have shared so much with and felt that it was safe to do so.

That's the thing about burnout: sometimes we throw it around like it could be a badge of honour. But when it's happening for real, it can feel like a secret that needs to be kept especially close. [In hindsight, I think that makes it heavier.]

Over the years we've kept sending the voice notes - now in between more frequent catch-ups. It's quite a collection. And at some point in the playback, I start recognising myself again. It's been good (to put it lightly), getting reacquainted.

These days Kate hears more about my burnout research breakthroughs, although we still occasionally trip up and say the word sorry.

From here on the other side, here's my advice for anyone who thinks they might be burning out: keep a diary.

You might think that you'll remember what it feels like to burn out - after all, it's pretty all encompassing when it happens, how could you forget?

But you might forget. And one day you're going to want to look back at that time and marvel at how far you've come.

Until that day? Make the notes. Keep the diary. (And tell your 'Kate'.)