or the cognitive strain from trying to understand and rubberstamp a word salad is bigger than working through problems

I feel this. Thinking about the domain, typing a bit, maybe having a new idea while I'm eating on a break now feels like a memory of heaven. Today I'm constantly going over painful "grilling" sessions where I have to read mountains of dense prose where each word maps to some "glossary" from previously generated docs and figure out what is overengineered bullshit and what is actually necessary.