How do I handle the stress of being blamed only when things break?

Everything rides on the pipelines you build, and the only time anyone notices is when they break — usually at 2am, and usually on you. Living inside that deal is quietly grinding. You get silence when it works and blame when it fails, which teaches your nervous system to never quite relax. Part of surviving this is refusing the story that the asymmetry tells about you. A break is not proof you are bad at your job. Complex systems fail; that is their nature, not your failing. The measure of your work is not whether something ever broke, but how you built for failure and how you respond when it comes. Judge yourself by that, not by the panic of a bad night. Practically, protect yourself from the 3am dread. Push for real on-call boundaries, runbooks, and backups so the whole system does not rest on you being awake and heroic. Make your quiet, working days visible so the wins count too, not just the failures. And when something does break, fix it, learn from it, and let it go — do not relive it at midnight for weeks. You keep the lights on for everyone. Do not let the rare dark moment convince you that is not true.