I was feeling proud of myself yesterday; I tackled something which we hadn't done before the week earlier, and got a lot of praise for it, and at the same time, recognised it as being just that: praise, and nothing more tangible than that. Despite that, I was still feeling motivated about doing my job. One of the great things about me is that I am an immensely responsible person. I do not like seeing something which I had a part in fail. That still drives me to do a good job, in spite of my not getting paid quite what I'm worth.

But today, that all vanished. I'm not sure what exactly triggered it... the knowledge that a colleague of mine in another office was leaving to join a competitor, another trite statement trotted out by my boss which we all recognised as being mere lip service, the ever-present resentment that we all feel at another department getting substantially higher pay than what we get even though we work our asses off too, or maybe, just maybe, the end of Volume 1 of Heroes. Whatever triggered it, once it came on me, I couldn't shake it off.

And so it was at 8.15 pm this evening, a colleague and I went off to one of the meeting rooms and just bitched our hearts out. I'm sick and tired of all this favourable treatment for fresh graduates, I said. It's not them you need to worry about attracting or retaining; it's us. We know how rare we are in the market. After all, you've just found out how hard it is to find good people with the experience you require. Why aren't you doing something about it?

And there it was. I'm still a fighter. I'm still self-motivated. But I'm also incredibly frustrated. I need a change. I need two changes, in fact, but right now, I'm focusing on just one. I'm not sure how much longer I'll last before I get to the second change, if I ever get to that stage.