Career burnout ? , yes overly long hours , constantly contacted when not at work and high stress environment . My occupation has always been known for excessively long hours , but when I took over running the operations ..maybe 16 to 17 years ago ? Things became much more intense . 12 hour days plus 2 hours travel 5 days a week ( nothing really unusual about that ) . Working weekends when we were behind production , or budgets or production schedules had to be in , plus being contacted via mobile both by calls and email at night and through the weekend and often going to site out of hours . Not being able to release that stress or fully forget . Even on annual leave I would be constantly checking emails and taking and making calls .
One word of caution would be don't let it get to the stage when you have a sort of a mental meltdown with it . I could feel the cracks opening up for about 10 years , but felt obligated and expected to continue to put that effort in ( this was 4 different jobs but doing the same thing at each operation ) . I blocked out the signs because this is the industry I have been in all my life and showing signs of weakness is not the done thing in this industry . Also the golden handcuff. I'm paid good dollar for my lifetime of experience , but have no skills in the normal world . So as I said I pushed it too far . I took 6 months off work trying to get my mind back in order , read about how to reverse burnout ....it only worked partly . I have been back doing the same thing for two years ( albeit a smaller operation which has the same issues but not as crazy as before ) . I'm still not right , I won't ever have the same capacity again I believe . I struggle with post burnout every day at work or when I'm contacted out of hours . So it sounds like one of those things yeah .. " I'm suffering burnout " ...." ok , take a week off and you'll be right as rain , all better " . You may not be , I'm not . I'm embarrassed to even admit that this had so much effect on me . It seems like such a weak assed thing to say this happened to me . I was known for my mental strength . I made it worse by not listening to my mind and stretching it to breaking point .