Thanks to Solderpunk for the kind words in his reply [0] to my phost
about my time as a paramedic. I would say to him - don't let me
discourage you! I started not out of some noble altruism, but
because my buddy's ambulance calls sounded cool. I worked more than
full-time (60 hours a week was not uncommon) in a busy city in the
90s that had lots of violent crime. And the deaths I wrote about
obviously impacted me to a much greater degree than any other calls
I went on. So my burnout was probably due to that, coupled with the
sheer volume of calls. Also, as someone who studied computer
science, I can say that the logical thinking I used when I wrote
code most definitely made me a better paramedic.

[0] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/solderpunk/phlog/delusional-ambo-fantasies.txt