At the heart of things, we all, methinks, wish to be part of a community.
However, many people seem to assume that they'll show up to that community, be handed a neatly lettered card detailing their position and the method of carrying out their duty, and take their place among their new fellow cogs, and that will be it.
Reality being the cold hard bitch that it is, this is most often not the case. Oh, there are indeed always generic positions to be filled in any community or organization. Places where one can come in and simply be another one of the mass...usually, in the "served", common user variety position.
But there are those who, upon seeing the community for what it is, find that there are needs to be met, holes in the structure which must be plugged, and go to work doing it. These individuals are generally, effectively, the administration, whether they are given title to recognize this or not.
And their burnout is enormous, especially in non-profit communities.
Through personal commitment and recognizance of problems, they commit a great portion of their lives toward the betterment of the community. Most often, and terribly necessarily, they serve an ideal, something they see the community as reaching toward, which they will ever strive (in whatever fashion suits them) toward achieving.
Often, no matter what or who has to be destroyed or broken down on the way.
Because there are always, and always will be, turning points in the life of a community or organization, where one must decide whether to serve the ideal, or the population of the community. In any case where the population comes first, the community starts to die.
But in any case where the ideal comes first, the administrators begin to burn out. Which means on an every day basis.
The obstacles of an administrator, whether elected or self-found, are many, and often overwhelming. For one thing, no one will ever say thank you. No, quite the opposite...whether elected or not, your lot is to hear the complaints of the rest of the community about how they are not being served, of how they are not being allowed to abort the ideal in the pursuit of their own passions.
Because most members of any given community are there to belong, generically...not to actually add to the life of the ideal.
Forget sacrfice and selflessness. Administrators have joined a community for an ideal, and are there to defend it, no matter who they have to destroy in the process. If they're allowed to...
But most often, they aren't. We live, after all, in a civilization. Which means that the happiness of the general generic population comes first, no matter how dire the need.
And so, after pushing, and straining, these administrators...these editors...generally burn out. They reach the end of their tethers...and decide to find another community, or a cell, or something elsewhere, where their efforts may be more achievable...or the hopeless pursuit of an ideal may be a little more rewarding.
Burnout is being told, day after day, that keeping the criminals happy is more important than keeping the ideal alive.
Burnout is knowing, moment by moment, that keeping things together and making a more perfect future is generally seen as far more of a crime than creating anarchy through personal happiness, on a community wise basis.
Matches, anybody?