This will sound unsympathetic, and I apologize for that, but I am genuinely puzzled.
Why would you "burn out" doing something that is presumably wholly voluntary?
In other words, why not quit or scale back involvement much sooner, before the downside(s) become so severe?
I'm not trying to criticize Tim Wood, I feel for him. And I LOVE moment.js! I'm very grateful for it and all the efforts that went, and goes, into it.
Because as the creator the project itself is wrapped up in your identity, something you made. One feels entwined with it's fate, no less than a founder of a startup does, and the more popular the more issues, noise, pull requests, etc.
It's easy to feel stand back a lot later and recognise that you are overwhelmed by it all, drowning. But even a successful project builds slow enough that one adapts to it all and don't notice.
It's a classic boiling frog problem and the project creator and core maintainer is the frog.
So it's easy for people to not even know that they need help, or to deny to themselves that something is wrong that needs help (or worse to be actively stigmatized away from finding help).
There are a lot more "It's ok, you'll come out of that funk in no time" and "Just push through the pain, it's no big deal" conversations, than there are "You know it's ok to talk to a professional about this stuff, everyone does it" and "Having depression is like having a broken leg. Not seeking help is the crazy choice." conversations.
Personally, I think mental illness awareness should be taught more like emergency response first aid or stroke recognition: don't teach it to the mentally ill person, teach proper intervention to the people who are more likely to notice it and do something.
The one mental disorder we actually do this with pretty well is ADHD, where family, friends and especially teachers and employers will generally notice before the person suffering it does. But then we use the fact that laypeople see it first as anecdotal "evidence" that it's not real, ignoring that you're a layperson too when you bring yourself to the doctor.
It's a tough situation all around. I look forward to the day when mental illness is better understood and proper identification and care is better communicated.
That's an interesting way to put it. I've always seen depression as more like a respiratory disease. It might just be a cold, so you should wait a week or two before going to the doctor, but if you get worse instead of better, you need to go get some help.
I suffered from serious depression until my mid-twenties. It made it difficult to function, yet the people around me couldn't understand or relate. I can't tell you how many times I was accused of "just being lazy". My mother once said to me, "I know you're not faking because no one would deliberately be this miserable." You absolutely have to treat this "like a broken leg" because it is a real illness that won't just go away on its own. I did that and eventually found help that worked for me. Except for one nightmare-ish three day recurrence (I was so scared) I've never suffered from it again.
Since then, I have had normal depression once or twice. This is what people meant when I tried to tell them about my sickness before and they would say, "Everyone feels depressed from time to time." (Oh how that sucked.)
Now I get it. Everyone does feels depressed from time to time, due to reasons. Something bad happens, or some condition is deeply unsatisfying in your life and you feel bad. That's totally normal and part of navigating life. (To me, having dealt with the monster for so many years, normal depression is almost cute. Even though it still sucks. It's the difference between a scratch and a tooth-ache.)
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edit: I just realized that this is why I couldn't understand Wood's actions. Given my history I wouldn't let anything send me back to the pit. Not even my most cherished project.
Thanks folks who responded. Warm regards.
To be more explicit using a personal example -- as a very small time OSS maintainer, I've had many people email asking me how to do something with my project. I put it out there, I would like to help them, but every bit of time I give them is time I'm not putting elsewhere. If I decline to help them it's natural to feel bad about it, especially when some people are less than polite about things. For larger projects you add in the responsibility you feel to contributors -- someone has written a PR and would like you to merge it. Often that involves quite a lot of time. Users file issues against you, or try to make your software work in environments it's not designed for, or just don't understand how it works. Very rarely does this lead to income -- in my case I wrote software as part of my job that I was able to open source. Great! But without prioritization from the company, it falls on me to manage these things, even if that's no longer my job or if I move on from the company. And my case is a good one -- many OSS maintainers will never see a dime for their work.
In my experience, burnout (and depression) is not something you realize you have until you are already deep in it. You may see symptoms of it, but it is easy to dismiss them as something else and completely miss the fact that you are burned out.
Hope that helps you to understand and be more sympathetic.
https://cloudup.com/cg2K9ikg_Av
I literally get emails every day for issues and my projects are much smaller than the amazing moment.js. If you're not equipped mentally and emotionally to deal with the literally endless barrage of issues it gets pretty easy to feel overwhelmed.
edit: updated to use proper characters for italics
If a project is the majority of your identity, then it's hard to just "scale back" when you know their are issues that "nobody else would fix right" or "will make me look bad because it's my ultimate responsibility." Of course, the right thing to do is step away, recover, reflect, and come back, but it's easier said than done for some.