I can answer that two ways

Since my trip down to the NOC, I've been exchanging a few emails with someone who happens to work there. In her most recent email, she asked:
"What is it that keeps you in that cube-monkey work environment?"
A daunting question, no?
I can answer this question two ways: one, by being a smart-ass, which really comes naturally to me. Two, by being what they refer to as honest.
Let's try the smart-ass way first.
* It's a safe and easy way to put food on the table. And, possibly to my health and greater benefit, my cat's food bowl. I just know that furball will come after me when the going gets tough. He's sizing me up already, I can feel it.
* Where else are cube monkeys to go if not for cubes?
* But somebody's got to make the doughnuts!
* It's the Man! The Man is keeping me in the cube-monkey environment.
Now for honesty, which, for 1030 on a Thursday, is quite challenging. It means I have to commit to thinking about my life for the next ten minutes or so! Ouch!
I guess I never really thought of all the options when I graduated from school. I knew, generally, the direction in which I wanted to go, and that was to work at a dot com. For better or worse, I got that wish here in New Jersey a few months later. That was in 99, and by 2000-2001, it all imploded, and I had to keep my head above water.
I've had my current job for two years now, and while it isn't glamorous and epitomizes the cube-monkey lifestyle, it allows me to edit some, gives me somewhere to go at 9 at every morning, and doesn't ask me to take it home at five. I'm pretty sure it isn't everything I want out of life ... I know I'm most at peace when I'm by a river or lake and mountains. I enjoy the sports one can do on them, but that's not the end-all, be-all for me. I more enjoy the rhythm of the nature around me, and its sounds, and that makes me feel I am actually part of the earth rather than just some being that lives on top of it.
But, where do I go from there? When I think about it, I don't have a perfectly suitable answer for that question. I guess for now I'll have to get my peace in doses.