Winter Malaise

On good days my job is fabulous, I carve great chunks of satisfaction from building and delivering IT systems. I feel like a Victorian engineer constructing soaring precision marvels in a virtual world. Others may not see it, but I build, shape and precisely dam great flows of information where choked pools once sat. And even if I don't write the code or connect the cables myself then steering a team of sometime non-believers through that process lets me wring happiness from my career.

Recently though, the good times have seemed less frequent and a pressure is building within me. I'm fed up. On rain-washed winter work days the duvet presses my body to the bed with the weight of a thousand past holidays and last night's ill-advised late night TV. The lure of returning some 17 hours later is all that prompts me to leave the bed's warm arms and stand dully beneath the tepid tendrils of the shower.

The grey of the trip to work is oppressive, row after row of boxy water-streaked single occupant cars cough needless exhaust and drag slowly through stagnating traffic systems. A colourless sky pinned at the horizons by production line office blocks stretches above an ill humoured 8:30am city centre.

Each day at work is a battle between my need to feel like I'm doing something constructive and the heavy ennui engendered by a lack of progress and another set of "issues". When stimulation is low I waste time like a sad tiger pacing its zoo cage, I visit and revisit the same websites, go to the coffee machine, repeat dull gossip.

I'm treading water, letting the hours of my life dribble like so much sand through my fingers, and while I can't stop the flow I should be able to take more pleasure from its steady rhythms and ever-shifting shape.

There's a life-change in the post, I just don't know when it's arriving.