Burnout?

[surfer924 -at- earthlink -dot- net]

I am relatively new to the Tech Writing field, though I am on my third job 
in as many years. I came to TW as a second career after retiring from  
military service. As a beginning tech writer with a fresh college degree, 
it took me almost a year to break into the field. In the mean time, I took 
a job doing market research just to pay the bills. Just when I reached the 
point of frustration and was ready to give up, I landed an entry-level job 
in the engineering department of an IT company. The manager and the other 
engineers were happy to have me, and were overjoyed when they found out I 
actually knew what I was doing and wanted to do it right (apparently the 
person I replaced was less than competent and really difficult to get along 
with). The other tech writer was a seasoned veteran who acted like a mentor 
for my first few months. I felt like I had made it. All in all it was a 
good job.

After about six months, we had a reorganization and fourteen people were 
laid off (including my boss)and the two tech writers were placed under 
marketing (but technically we still worked for engineering). I hung in 
there for another six months, then other things started happening within 
the company to make working there less than tolerable. Now that I had over 
a year's experience doing actual technical writing, I decided to start 
looking for another job. In a few short weeks I found one with a defense 
contractor offering me a $10K. raise with a signing bonus! (I thought only 
engineers & programmers got those). I took the job, which I have been doing 
for the last six months. I'm writing twice as many documents as I did in my 
last job, making more money, learning new software, and my boss is 
constantly telling me what a great job I'm doing.

So what's the problem? I think I'm getting burned out. Lately, the thought 
of going in and sitting in front of the computer all day writing documents 
that nobody is going to read is making it almost impossible to get out of 
bed. I get to work and I find myself watching the clock waiting for the day 
to be over.

To those of you who are long-time technical writers, is this common? Is it 
a passing phase or did I pick the wrong profession?

Thanks in advance for your feedback. 

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