Each year I slip into hibernation. Like chlorophyll draining from the leaves, the energy I bring to work recedes, leaving only its skeleton, stripped of color.
In ordinary seasons I summon a kind of creative enthusiasm. There is joy in the hunt for clarity, in turning engineer-speak into human language. Some days writing feels alive, as if a single reworked sentence reveals a small truth.
But then autumn comes. The reservoir empties. It becomes harder to pretend there is meaning in distilling technical explanations into neat MadLibs templates: overview intros, conceptual articles, process docs, API definitions. They still get written, but with less conviction. The work becomes task, not craft.
Ecclesiastes offers a hauntingly simple truth: there is nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in toil. That is the ideal, not merely to endure work, but to receive it as gift.
And yet I find more ennui than joy in mine.
Ennui is not the despair of collapse. It does not arrive with fire. It seeps in with fog. Hours blur, tasks repeat, nothing new emerges. The work feels necessary and yet inconsequential.
To admit this feels risky. What kind of professional confesses the work doesn’t always feel meaningful? Yet most of us drift through seasons when effort feels hollow. Ecclesiastes reminds us we are not the first: the Preacher surveyed wisdom, pleasure, wealth, toil — and found them all vanity.
The question is not how you work when meaning is present, but how you work when it evaporates. However, before exploring the how, let’s consider the what.
Ennui’s Shape
Ennui has a different texture than exhaustion. Fatigue asks for sleep. Ennui asks for meaning. It isn’t the ache of overuse but the thinness of repetition, the sense that nothing new waits beyond the next sentence or sprint ticket.
Philosophers have long wrestled with this void. Kierkegaard called it despair, the slow erosion of self when no “why” holds. Nietzsche offered a harsher test: eternal recurrence. If you had to live this day, in this form, over and over for eternity, could you affirm it? Would you embrace even the mundane, even the documentation edits, as worth repeating forever?
Camus, more defiant, described life as absurd. We hunger for meaning, and the universe returns silence. His answer wasn’t resignation but rebellion. He imagined Sisyphus, condemned to push his boulder up the hill only to watch it roll back down, as secretly free. The gods could sentence him to labor, but not to despair. His defiance was simple: to push well, to treat the stone as if it mattered.
I think of these men when the fog of ennui settles over my work. Technical writing lacks the drama of philosophy, but it forces you to live its questions. Is there meaning in distilling a technical explanation into a process doc that half your audience may skim? Is there dignity in structuring an API definition so that a future engineer doesn’t curse you at 2 a.m.? Or is it all vanity, one more entry in the endless churn of corporate production?
This is where philosophy presses into craft. Ennui strips away the illusions of inspiration, leaving the raw test: will you keep writing when the feeling is gone? Will you still order chaos into coherence for a reader you may never meet?
If meaning must be earned, perhaps it is earned here. When the work is stripped bare of reward, you choose to give it form. But how?
Defiance in Practice
When the reservoir runs dry, you learn to invent your own streams.
Over the years, I’ve developed ways to bypass ennui. None of them restore joy. They aren’t cures. They are small acts of rebellion against the void. They are little choices that keep my hand moving even when my heart resists.
1. Urgency through artificial deadlines
I often set myself deadlines tighter than necessary. A ticket due Friday becomes, in my mind, due Wednesday at noon. It’s a trick of the clock, but it works. Pressure transforms boredom into a fight. Suddenly I’m not drifting. I’m in a race where the words sharpen, because constraints demand precision.
Deadlines remind me that time itself is a boundary. Camus might call this absurd, but it’s a form of choosing. If the boulder must be pushed, then I can decide how steep the hill will be.
Psychologists call this job crafting, reshaping your work to make it more engaging. A recent study on workplace boredom found that people with higher self-control were more likely to respond with active coping strategies like creating new challenges. Artificial deadlines are just that: a crafted challenge that turns listless repetition into urgency.
2. Competition as fuel
Sometimes I picture Gabe working on the same project. In my mind, we’re racing. He’s faster, more focused, already ahead. That imagined rivalry stirs something primal: I won’t be outdone. It’s childish, maybe, but effective. Where enthusiasm has fled, pride steps in.
Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence sneaks in here. If I had to relive this documentation task endlessly, how would I want it to occur? Would I want to lose each time, or win? The competition is illusory, but the work it summons is real.
Gamification research confirms this. A 2024 mixed-methods study found that when students used a gamified task manager with points, progress bars, and narrative challenges, their self-control measurably increased and procrastination decreased. Competition, even imagined, creates stakes. It reframes dull tasks as battles to be won.
3. Proxy care
When my own care thins out, I borrow someone else’s concerns. Sometimes it’s the PM who needs clear docs to drive adoption. Sometimes it’s the engineer who will get fewer angry Jira tickets if I anticipate the error path.
When I imagine this person, I realize that I’m not writing to fill space. I’m writing to prevent despair. The sentence is a lifeline. Kierkegaard would call this a leap of faith: choosing to invest belief where none is guaranteed.
4. Concern for the future user
This may sound like proxy care, but it’s sharper. Good technical writing moves someone from confusion to clarity. The fatigue tempts me to forget that. When I picture a reader struggling with the product, I’m attentive again.
Choosing to Push the Stone
Camus ends Le Mythe de Sisyphe with an almost scandalous line: “Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.” (One must imagine Sisyphus happy.)
It’s a strange proposal. What kind of happiness could exist in endless repetition? What joy could be found in pushing the same stone, again and again, only to watch it tumble back down?
And yet, the myth is not so distant from the life of a technical writer. We revise tickets that look nearly identical. We polish sentences that will be skimmed. We explain yet another integration workflow, onboarding guide, or API parameter. Push the stone, watch it roll down, return to the base, repeat.
The absurdity is obvious. The question is what you do with it.
When the thrill evaporates, when enthusiasm withdraws like chlorophyll from the leaves, what remains is the chance to decide. You can let the void consume you, or you can lean into the work as an act of defiance.
But how will you do the work? With resentment? With hollow indifference? Or with the quiet, deliberate insistence that clarity is reason enough to move forward?
That choice doesn’t resolve the ennui. It transforms it. And in the rhythm of that persistence, something like meaning flickers back into view.
Not triumphant. Not dramatic. Just steady.