That sinking feeling

So summer is great, eh? You had 2 or 3 weeks of vacation and then you're coming in the office this morning, pretty much against your will as you'd have preferred to stay on that sandy beach, or just sitting in your porch drinking Coors and listening to crickets. You entered the building and went straight to your tiny cubicle, and then a sudden sinking feeling hit you like a semi on the New Jersey turnpike.

"What the fuck am I doing here?" you said to yourself.

You sat in your chair, wondering if all those years spent in school, all this time studying late at night in college, all of this was worth it when the end result is so meaningless. You are just another cubicle worker and your work is null in the grand scheme of things. The workplace is so grey (or beige) it sucks the life out of you the minute you step in.

And job-wise it's not like you're creating the next cool gizmo or the next great Web site. Your job to write pointless documents that will be shelve in a week, configure some obscure software that you're unable to explain its use to your lucky non-IT friends or write code for a very dull application.

You then remembered your high school teacher who said - you are special, one day you will accomplish great things. You did not. You ended up at the bottom of a large corporate pyramid like most of your friends. And a vast majority on them are now on medication to address chemical imbalance in their brain. Maybe after all you should talk to your doctor.

"What the fuck did I do wrong" you wondered.

You then checked your e-mails, wondering if your boss or some VP sent you an invitation for a special project, but alas - just reminders to fill your time sheet. Everyone ignored you. Except Peoplesoft automated scripts.

You examined the people who work at the client site. Low-watt bulbs who got a government job just for the benefits, they come in to work everyday knowing nothing will get done, but they don't care. Nobody cares. People just go coast through life with minimal awareness. It comes to your attention that people serving a life sentence in jail must have more fun than government workers and consultants. At least they can watch TV during daytime.

"Is this all there is?" you asked yourself.

You then faked work until 5pm, surfed to fight boredom. You went home to hind that your husband / wife / insignificant other has overcooked the meatloaf. Your gloomy face invited snarky comments such as "you're lucky, you have a job" or "of course work is dull, my job is tedious too, who has a funny job?". Your feelings then sank even lower while attacking the burnt thing that was in your plate.

It's a this very point you must realize that all this awareness is BAD for you. You feel depressed because your unfulfilled dreams take centre stage and steal your focus. You should not worry about past decisions, you can't change the past.

Your happiness should be geared toward this simple algorithm:

1. Is the client happy? Even if the shit you're doing is totally meaningless, is the client happy of what you do or pretend to do?

2. Is the firm happy? In other words, is your presence in this cubicle profitable to CGI?

If the answer to both question is yes, then you should be happy as well. Depressed people are the ones whose definition of happiness is way too complex. Keep your own definition very simple - like the one I strongly recommended - and you'll see that life is much more easy to go through. Your personal satisfaction must be tightly exist with earnings your provide to the firm.

Have a great day. A really great day. Now get back to work.