so how's my new job?

"so how's your new job?", he asked.
what do i think of my current job? not much at all, really.

i find myself waking up every morning to the intolerable drone of mediocrity, spending half the journey trying to figure out what to look forward to in the office and, upon revelation, the other half of the journey agonising in the expectance of the tedium waiting to asphyxiate every ounce of life in me. it's such a drag, but i guess you already know.

in a nutshell, my job is Mundane with a capital M - M for More-exciting-just-watching-grass-grow. instead of calling it a breeding ground or a stepping stone to greater heights, i'd much rather liken it to a barren wasteland, an infertile plot of desolation. the people there have the culture of robotic arms on a production line, and humour and laughter are as ubiquitous as shooting stars. the environment is sterile and inanimate. and i can't even begin to describe the overwhelming resentment during those ultra-long hours of unproductive overtime.

it might be that the status quo of the global market requires buckets of patience and knuckling-down in the short-term, but the mid- and long-term prospects aren't looking too bright either. the system is rigid, the workflow and processes are monotonous, and the testimonies of my senior colleagues share a commonality of discontentment about the scarcity of opportunities to learn, to improve, to upgrade, unanimously reciting the anti-thesis of career progression. doing what we do, there's simply neither job satisfaction nor sense of achievement.

inevitably, to make it worse, of course there will be gossip-mongers in the office, easily identifiable by the distinct silence that abruptly swallows their stream of whispers, murmurs, and tsk-tsk's whenever someone walks within earshot. of course, being the new guy, i get to experience the awkwardness of silencing these people, and it doesn't help much in terms of relationship-building when they have this habit of never looking away from their work during a conversation. i think it's disrespectful and annoying, especially when all they say is monosyllabic - it's either a "YA" or "NO" in a rude, impatient tone. it's having an erosive effect on my motivation to go to work, and recently, my punctuality, or should i say lack thereof, has been fueling the gossip-mongers' barrage on my threshold of tolerance. vicious cycle, yeah?

on my way home at the end of another fucked-up workday spent doing 3-4 hours of overtime, i look around and see other zombies like me - lifeless, depressed, and fucking tired from the day's battles. no wonder the entertainment business is so lucrative. it's no longer a luxury, it's a need to be entertained - to be able to chill out, to unwind, to discard the day's troubles, to empty all the trash in our recycle bins, to find a fountain of health to replenish vitality. recreation = re-creation.

i bitch and whine about my shitty job to everyone who cares to ask, but, putting things into perspective, although it's far from ideal, at least it puts bread on the table, and beer on the bar counter - and there's always the chance of finding a better job when the turmoil settles and the climate starts looking rosy again. i think i need to re-adopt the mind-over-matter mentality that was so jubilantly ditched on ORD day.

work-life balance - notice how work comes first in that phrase?