h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Things will never be different. All we can hope for is that the people running things will become so ensnared in the false importance of what they do that they forget about us and leave us to live as we wish.
Try looking in newsagents for flats. The people that put adverts in papers aren't the sort of people you'd want to live with or rent from, as illustrated by their inability to give all the pertinent pieces of information in their advert.
I'm dreading job interviews. If I try and look as if I believe the crappy up-its-arse job I'm going for has meaning, I'll appear to be a t**t. If I consider the truth of the matter and mock the people that ask me the questions from the other side of their large, shiny desk I will laugh. Neither of these things will earn me money to eat and sleep indoors. By law there should be only two questions at interviews: "Are you prepared to do all the boring stuff we'll make you do in order to allow us to pay you?" and "Can you do the job? If not, can you learn soon enough for it to go unnoticed?" None of this "What do you feel is the most significant advance in this field within the past six months?" and "where do you stand on the principles involved in these matters?" bollocks. The human brain is capable of a great many delusions but it surely can't sincerely believe that half the jobs people in this country do matter to them in any way other than the food-and-board part of the deal.

Hum. Perhaps a little more in-depth thinking than I was involved in at the time of posting. But, long live difference.
It seems to me that the fundemental issue with change is that it must be driven by an attitude within yourself. There's no point (as I was doing yesterday) moaning about the situation you are in and going through the motions in a vague kind of way. You can't do that if you're thrown in the sea, that's just treading water. Sooner or later you'll have to sink or swim and (aside from the practical aspects of knowing how to swim) that choice comes from you. I know that this metaphor doesn't "hold water" for very long, but it's the thought that counts.
My attitude seems to be similar to most people I meet. It's the old "don't rock the boat argument" (very nautical themes coming out here). The only way to buck the system is to do it on your own, not to wait for others to come and offer you change.
I think that my original posting was a subconscious statement of this. I realised that I was bored in my job, bored with my lifestyle etc, but that I had not made any significant moves towards a better place.
It is so easy to tread water and shrug in that very British way that means "well, we're up to our necks in it, but at least we're not in above our heads". Sooner or later, the tide changes and the level rises.
To finalise the damning argument against my own lethargy, I've spent minutes typing this, trying to examine the fact that I need to change my attitude and now I'm going to walk away, have a ciggie and sit sullen-faced all afternoon waiting for the bank holiday to start.

I'm my own worst enemy.

Aye. People are often questioning who they are in relation to their society (usually meaning their country) when it only matters who they are in relation to the people that know them - the circle of perhaps ten close friends, fifty extra colleague/associate-type friends, few extra immediate family that might not impinge upon daily life but are always "there" and a few others. This is how humans evolved within a smallish local tribe and that's how many people we're designed to cope with, even though the face-recognition software in our heads can cope with thousands. Look on the job stuff as the equivalent of taking a turn to dig the weeds up from the tribal wheatfield or milking the tribal cows.