Bang Your Head

I have been mulling over the night Otis's comment from yesterday post. I include the relevant comment here:

"I would challenge you as I have in the past that maybe the reason you are at your current job or industry isn't to necessarily accomplish things on paper as strange as that sounds. Maybe you are there for a different reason. How can you be an influence and as an example to those who you interact with on a daily basis? This can maybe help you adjust your thought process and attitude away from the tasks. Just a thought."

It's a fine thought, and probably a good one. The fact that it makes me bang my head is probably not relevant.

Questions, always questions. If influence is the question, why this situation? Why couldn't I influence people in a situation that I might enjoy more - you know, as a writer or maybe in this industry but not in a pressure cooker? If I'm an example, what am I an example of - how to slowly go mad, or perhaps how to question your career choice 12 years after you made it?

(Banging of head commences)

Somewhere inside of me, I know I should be grateful - as The Ravishing Mrs. TB pointed out, at least I'm not in a job where the ceiling literally collapses on you and buries you underground, and I certainly know the pain of not having a job to go to. At the same time, I grow weary of going to a job that I tolerate not because of some esoteric attachment or even because it's actually doing some good somewhere, but because that's what I do now and the possibility of changing to something else is remote at the time. I would, as I have only a few times in my life, like to get up to go to work with a sense of excitement and pleasure, instead of the dull sense of necessity that propels me out the door virtually ever morning.

If an influence or example, it would at least feel helpful to see some of that in my daily existence, instead of not seeing or feeling the impact - if ever. Probably the only thing worse than spending time in any activity which serves no purpose is the illusion that you spent your time there to fulfil a useful purpose, only to find that you were wrong after the fact.