i want to care, but i don't

why bother? / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Originally uploaded by jontintinjordan

I'm back to "why bother" mode at work. I'm finding it difficult to get into work by 9, and to convince myself to stay beyond 5. And it's not like I have anything compelling to distract me. Before heading to work, I'll be surfing the internet, maybe reading blogs or discussion boards. When I get home, I'll do some exercise, surf the internet, catch some Netflix.

A few months ago, there were a few precious days when I was working on an issue which had strongly grabbed my attention. I was so obsessed that I came back to work after leaving for the day, and stayed till after midnight to work on it. I hadn't felt so good since I was in grad school. At that time, every minute of every day felt like effort I was expending on myself, on something that was important to me, personally.

This meshes up with an RSA Animate video that I viewed recently. The animation was made to accompany a talk by Dan Pink about how (according to some study) money is an insufficient motivator, except for workers doing very mechanical, non-creative tasks (I'm glossing over the details, but that's the gist of it).

Yeah, I get that. I still need to work for a living, and in a job hunt, I'm going to pick the highest paid job I can find, so money motivates to a certain extent. But will I do the best I possibly can at that job, giving it my heart and soul, like I did when I was a grad student? Most of the time, the answer is no. Because I fundamentally don't care about what I'm doing. I know that companies buy the software that I'm working on, so it's obviously valuable to them. But I see no value in the product (in fact I kind of hate it).

In addition to that, I've lost the feeling of "tribe" that I felt I had in grad school. At that time, I felt like I was part of a cohort with similar lofty goals: contributing to science, discovering new things. I'm a cohort of one where I work now. There isn't a sense of trust. People look at you sideways if you say the wrong thing, and you never know exactly what will sound wrong, so you don't say much at all. Ask for help? If you do that, you're "bothering" people, acting like some junior newbie.

And despite all that, my current job is really not so bad. My coworkers are fine people. There's just something missing. I should probably leave, to look for that sense of team elsewhere. But I kind of wonder if it exists. If it does, it's probably so rare that it would be very difficult to find. Maybe my best bet is to just keep saving till I can be done with working for a living.