There comes a time in any career, including technical communication, where you just become burnt out. There are a number of reasons for this happening — some are valid, some less so. Regardless, it’s not a pleasant thing to go through either mentally or emotionally.
And I’m speaking from experience. I nearly burnt out twice — once in 1999 and again in 2002. It wasn’t pretty, and I came very close to chucking my technical writing career for … well, anything that wasn’t technical writing. During those periods, as family and friends and co-workers could attest, I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around.
This article looks at professional burnout among technical communicators and discusses ways of dealing with it. I wish this article had been available in ’99 and ’02.
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