Apathy Jack writes:

The proliferation of blogs, livejournals, message boards and the like over the last few years has led to a massive upswing in the number of people sharing. Most of that is your typical attention seeking jiggery pokery from teenaged goths and the like. However, I have also noticed one thing: People are oftentimes likely to post their long dark teatimes of the soul, or whatever is the appropriate term for the general bouts of discontent that plague the idle classes.

Every so often, I’ll dial up a blog, a livejournal or any such internet Wankportal™, and there will be an angst-laden entry about how Person X is feeling unfulfilled. They’re not suffering from any new emotional distress in particular, they’ve just looked at their lives and wondered if anything they’re doing matters. How is their day job of colour-coding chickens down at the local Pervert-Emporium actually making a difference? If they went back in time and hid their father’s beer that night so he didn’t end up going home with Shovel-Face Shazza whose father the Minister was already loading up the shotgun for the wedding, would anyone even notice?

I always have to stop myself from replying to these entries. Oh, I don’t want to pass negative comment; the angst they’re feeling – existential though it may be – is very real. However, whenever I read one of these pieces, my natural urge is to reply “Really? I’m hugely fulfilled. What I do with my life is important - And not just the cop out of ‘important to me’; What I do is, by objective standards, enormously important. Directly or indirectly, I have affected positive change in the lives of hundreds of people, and I rightly go to sleep every night satisfied that I am doing Good Work and that my absence would be to the detriment to a large number of people.

But, y’know, that’s probably not what people need to hear, right?