There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being admired for the wrong reasons. It doesn't announce itself as exhaustion at first. It arrives dressed as achievement — a title, a platform, a photograph at the right event — and it takes years before you notice that none of it required you to be useful to anyone.
I have watched friends, and at times myself, optimize for the version of a life that photographs well rather than the version that means something on a Tuesday afternoon when no one is watching. Impressiveness is a public currency. Usefulness is a private one. They are not opposites, but they are rarely built by the same daily habits.
The most impressive people I know stopped trying to be impressive around the same time they became genuinely useful to somebody.
Becoming useful is slower and far less photogenic. It looks like showing up for the unglamorous middle of other people's problems. It looks like doing the work that will not be mentioned in your bio. But it is the only kind of becoming that survives the removal of an audience.
The question worth asking, then, is not 'does this make me look like I am becoming something,' but 'does this make me someone worth needing.' The second question is harder, and it is the only one that matters.