Making a dysfunctional situation work is way more difficult than just finding a different situation. The good thing is that compared to folks who are plumbers or truck drivers or cooks, it's much easier to do that for folks working on code.
It is wholly anecdotal, but the biggest quality of life improvement I've ever had was finding a full-time, 100% remote job that had good boundaries on how much work was expected.
At this point, I've negotiated the workload to 30 hours a week and I can sit in an environment that I've setup with only my personal needs in mind. The pay and benefits are not as good as they would be for the same job with a larger company, but the work is still fun and interesting and expectations on quality are very high.
I had to join a climbing gym because I want to find folks to socialize with, but that's had a lot of other good benefits.
If you actually want mechanisms for being happy no matter what, start realising that none of the stuff you’re stating as issues actually matters, and you can work on accepting that. What does the walls have to do with your happiness? You control if you’re happy or not.
Stoicism-like ideas and reading can help (or at least do for me, minus the religious bits) with realising that external factors do not matter for your happiness. Happiness is 100% controlled by your mind. There are unhappy people who have all the things you say you lack and way more, and there are happy people who have none of them, and are in situations that are objectively way worse than yours, so the state of material things is not the defining factor for your happiness. The defining factor is you and how you choose to react to external things.
You might need to be the fun person. Invite the team on a hike, plan a picnic. Set a timer, 8 hours in? Just leave
I don't want to suggest "change jobs". However: if you can't find a way to make your work better. Set an end date and go for three drastic change. If you can, move to a new city. Downsize your current living situation.
If this is not feasible it could be that you 'just' need to change the room/floor/corner of the building. Perhaps move closer to a window. Something facing West will give you natural light after 11am, or East for the early walk-ins.
I remember I was working in one of them new skyscrappers in London a few months ago. We were given a meeting room so the whole team can stick together for a massive project. The room's name was "engine room". EVERYONE was sick all the time. The room was cold, with minimal light, and we were pulling 12 hours shifts in there. The £ was great, but we all almost got pneumonia.
When that project was finished and we were "free" to wander on other floors (or work remotely), I found a desk right next to the windows and haven't coughed since.
I used to work from home but the last 6 years I have worked in an office with brown cubes, no windows, tons of useless meetings, noise and I more and more realize that this is starting to eat me up from the inside. I think I am pretty good at dealing with adversity, I live healthily, I exercise, I meditate, but this is slowly killing my spirit and my motivation. I don't think changing my attitude would help.
This and headphones with your music.
Also and above all, do take regular breaks and plenty of virtual cigarettes (as in going thru the process but not smoking - as in just get out of the office for a few minutes).
I've never heard of this; could you elaborate? What health-relevant emissions do CRTs give out, and how would having a cactus in the vicinity of the CRT help?
EDIT: read through more of the link, and it's total bullshit. A representatively BS quote, brackets mine:
> Because of the spider plants amazing abilities at cleaning out pollution [completely false extrapolation of the Clean Air Study], it is also believed to be effective at absorbing forms of radiation in the home [WTF?]
So I went to my manager and complained that I never got a tree. I promised not to hug it, but I insisted that I wanted my own tree, too.
Anyway, rubber duck, as I was saying...
I always find "office activities" incredibly awful. Nothing like having an icecream social when everyone still steaming from work they should be focusing on. However, you could try starting an office pool for bagels, cookie of the month club, or whatever. It might be a nice diversion that improves your morale and takes little time away from work.
Set up an office in a nice building with high-quality architecture[1] and you'll be able to retain a much higher degree of engineer, per-dollar. Maybe the tradeoff doesn't work in SF's insane property market, but anywhere else it seems like a no-brainer.
[1] Which for some reason almost always means buildings that are more than half a century old- our culture has gone big into the dreary corporate office building thing.
[0]https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=122&cp_id=12240&cs_id...
Plants are also a great idea. If you have a fixed desk location you can get pretty elaborate with fairly high-maintenance potted plants (since you're next to them all the time).
Scheduling exercise during your lunch break, if possible, should also help.
At my current job, I'm making an effort to invite my coworkers to lunch once or twice a week. Chances are they feel just as unwelcomed as you do. It only takes one person to break the ice, and it makes a difference.
You can set it up so that it seems your desktop is on a sunny beach, or a mountain peak, a train, ...