*waves*
I’ve been doing a lot of soulsearching lately.
I’ve made the transition from full-time writer to part-time writer (and am working going back to full-time or something full-time), and the experience has really made me think.
What is a technical writer? A glorified typist? A precise troubleshooter? An information developer?
How can these skills translate into other positions within an organization? Systems Analyst? Business Analyst? Programmer (with some classes under my belt)? User Interface designer? Courseware Developer?
When I look at my resume from ten years ago or so, I want to laugh so hard I cry. I was a brave little typist back then, with some skill in figuring stuff out and putting it to paper for other people. And I met a lot of people, and picked up a lot of skills. It’s been a heck of a decade since I threw myself out there with a few years of self-directed experience on a resume that didn’t quite fill one page.
Thanks to the friends and colleagues I’ve met along the way. 
I have changed and grown, a lot. But in dealing with a student-oriented software program (I’m back in school and all classes require me to manage my courses and work within a software dashboard) I’ve learned something that’s remained the same for me for well over two decades now. I’ve never really met an interface that I really really liked. I need to stay in the business and keep pushing improvements. I may never get to “totally happy” but I’ll stick with “happy enough for this release”.
That seriously was one of the questions at an interview session I had recently. “What really drives you to be a technical writer? What makes you get up and say I want to do some technical writing today?” At the time I thought it was a silly question (sorry, Brian), because I didn’t have the words beyond, “I like teaching and sharing” which at the time sounded rather weak. And still does. Paying the mortgage isn’t too smooth, either, but I was smart enough to not bring that one up.
It is true, though – I’ve never met an interface I really liked. I like to tinker, and hopefully, improve them. That’s why I like information development and all the baggage that goes with it.
I’d be perfectly happy running a small bookstore or doing some other non-writing, non-software or non-hardware job — but you bet in my spare time I’d be doing that kind of tinkering anyway. 