Whether you love your job or not, the day to day activities tend to get repetitive. Same people, same responsibilities, same environment. Having some variety mixed in can go a long way to preventing burn out. Having the opportunity to go to a work conference, while always a mixed bag of tricks, is usually a welcomed change to break up the monotony.

The knowledge of your peers
These types of things always seem to come at a bad time. You’ve got deadlines, and things to take care of. Why do you have to go away for a few days to hear boring speeches, and sit through training sessions? While these things may be true, you should also recognize it as an opportunity. It’s already happening, so if you just embrace it, you’ll get much more out of it.

People from many different locations, and job environments usually wind up at these things. Sometimes, it’s refreshing to see who they are, and how their situation relates to yours. That in itself can make you feel better, knowing that you’re not alone. Others share the same concerns, and problems. Often at these conferences, someone may have approached things from a different angle, and already come up with a solution that you can share with your coworkers. No matter the type of conference, or the industry involved, it can always help to absorb the shared knowledge of your peers.

Some downtime with coworkers
Besides the actual work related knowledge you may gain from these conferences, you will inevitably spend a lot of personal time with your coworkers. In your office, you may see each other from 9-5, but while traveling, you may find yourself with a room mate, or having a few beers after the educational portion of the day. Believe it or not, this can go a long way to improving your in-office situation. The more comfortable you are with someone, the easier it is to deal with a difficult situation. Being on your own is never fun, so sharing in an experience like this with a coworker will always make you feel more like a team. You might still be stuck working at the job, but at least you’ll gain another person to complain to!

Time to get away
Regardless of what you learn, or how much closer to your coworkers you may become, going to a conference usually means getting away! Even if you’re from a great city like Manhattan, going somewhere else is always refreshing. You get to see what the it’s like in another city, and hopefully see what the locals do for fun. Different sights, bars, restaurants, whatever. It’s different, so it’s more interesting than the stuff that you see every day going to and from your local office.

Act on that newfound info
One thing I’ve learned from going to a few of these types of conferences, is that if you get home and don’t take some sort of action on the new information you’ve attained, it tends to get lost. You have have learned about some new programs, or techniques. They made a lot of sense and were fresh in your mind at the time, but a month later, you’re not quite sure why it was so relevant. When you get back, just go through some notes, take another look at the slides/handouts/websites, and let it really sink in. Only then can you really put it to work.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and I’ve seen a few TV shows where they were making it a point to actually give thanks for some of the things in their lives. Being totally uncreative, I’ve decided to steal that idea. The more I thought about it, even though I can talk trash about working in a cube for hours, there’s quite a bit that I can be thankful for as well.

While working in an office cubicle, and being lost among a sea of horrid half-walls and industrial carpet is not exactly living the high life, at least it is a living. By ‘a living’, of course I mean it pays my bills…most of them anyway. With the state of the U.S. economy still in recovery mode, this year I am thankful that I still have a decent job. Sure, I may not love everything I’m doing, or get some sort of deep down satisfaction at the end of each day, but I’m a lot better off than those who didn’t make it through the 4 rounds of job cuts my company went through earlier this year.

I squeaked through with a 10% pay cut for half of the year, but at the end of it all, I still had a full time job. Every once in a while, I actually recognize how bad the finances were at my company in order for them to be forced to lay off so many people. In those times of recognition, like right now, I say thank you for that pay cut, and thank you for letting me lead my simple lifestyle without making too many changes.

As we all know, the office can be filled with a bunch of annoying characters. Maybe they’re trying to make awkward conversation with you in the kitchen, or jumping into your cube unexpectedly, ignoring some basic cube etiquette. Maybe they smell, or don’t even recognize the things you do. There’s tons of things to complain about with coworkers, but hey, they spice up the potential monotony of the day as well. If everyone in my office had a completely neutral personality, with no quirks or issues to deal with, I’d have a lot less to talk about.

That’s not even a reference to Office Cube Life, I mean in general. Whether you’re in the elevator, out at lunch, or having a beer…coworkers give you a lot of material to talk about with your friends and other coworkers. So this year, I say thank you to the guy that forgets to flush in the bathroom. I say thanks to the guy that doesn’t even know I exist, and ignores me because I’m not in a suit. You guys may not be my buddies, or the type of people I’d want to be stuck in an elevator with, but you make my day a little more interesting.

At the end of the day, I’m very happy to have my little web job. Who am I to complain, when there are whole families struggling to stay afloat, and I’m still paying $80 a month for my gym membership. Just this once, everything is okay with life, and I love working in my little office cubicle.