Despondency At Work

Strangely despondent at work yesterday.

I can't really trace it down to a single factor. It's not as if work was more overwhelming than it has been in the past. It's not as if it was the middle of the week (it was Monday). It's not as if the people that usually bother me were there (they were not).

So what was up?

The only thing that I can pin down is a sense of the overwhelming. A sense of reviewing document after document, knowing that there are (literally) at least a thousand more behind them needing review as well. A sense of the fact that no matter how much I do in the time I'm there, I leave with just as much work there as I arrived with. A sense of the fact that, longer term, all the effort is doomed to fail.

Would it help if there were victories? Sure - but as I've discovered, victories are not recognized as such. They are, apparently, merely expectations of things that were supposed to be accomplished, not significant milestones along the way. This alone can make any advancement towards future "victories" very difficult to achieve.

Would I find less despondency if I would doing something else? Hard to say - at this point, I can scarcely imagine doing anything else other than what I am doing now (which may be part of the problem). Would I find less despondency if I was doing what I am doing somewhere else? Again, hard to say - every location has it's own specific issues, and it really seems to be a case of the grass always appears greener wherever you are.

But the question remains: How does one fight the sense of one's effort amounting to nothing, every day?