Living spiritually - in a small office

The office is not a natural setting for human beings. Sitting still for 8 hours with occasional breaks to the bathroom or lunchroom is not natural. Bodies aren’t built for that. The 40 hour week isn’t natural either. To spend 40 hours a week in the company of people you might not ever care to know is hard enough, but to do that with the false and unnatural physical intimacy (in my office no body is further than 5 feet away from some one or two other bodies) and false friendliness when really everyone gets on everyone else’s nerves, due partly to proximity.

I know people (one, anyway) who is really passionate about what they do and they do it in an office setting, but they are at the top tier and don’t have to be at the office to work, have a lot more flexibility along with all that more responsibility, and are in charge of themselves – when they show up, where and when they go, etc. They are in positions of authority and while others may not agree with them, they aren’t in a position to argue too strongly with them either.

I know one thing – I am not now, nor have I ever been, built for office life. Yet that’s where I’ve been off and on for most of my adult life. I guess it’s a testament to determination and my ability to succeed at anything I set my mind to, since everyone will tell I don’t belong in an office, doing bookkeeping/accounting tasks, and yet that’s what I’ve been doing to pay the bills for a very long time.

I read some of "Eat, Pray, Love" and while it seemed a really well written and good book, I couldn’t get past the fact that yea, when I’m on the road and traveling to distant and wonderful places I feel very spiritually in tune and aware. Hell, when I have some financial security I find it very spiritual. My problem is that when I work in an office 40 hours a week to pay the bills and stave off the wolf at the door it’s hard to feel anything other than numb. Numb because otherwise I’d be a screaming lunatic or in seething mode all the time.

My theory for years has been that I ought to be able to be spiritual in any and every situation. Would the Dalai Lama feel the way I do working 40 hrs a week at a job isn't his main passion in life? I mean, if told death was coming in 3 weeks, who would be rushing to the office to call an insurance company to find out benefits and coverage for a client of some else’s? I mean, I could possibly see myself doing that if it were my client, but if I had just 3 weeks to live, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be spending it ‘in business’. Besides, insurance companies don't cover spiritual counceling or psychic readings, so it wouldn't come up.

So the question is; is working in an office so hard for me because of some weakness or fault on my part? or, is it that my strenghts don't get tapped into in administrative tasks so the problem is me putting myself in situations I don't belong in, artifically making me and "them" wrong?