A LONELY ROAD

At some point in life, you realize the road ahead is shorter than the pavement already covered. You don't know how much shorter, just that it must be.
At that point, life takes on a different shape and meaning. You realize it has far less to do with things and achievements and more about sharing what little time is left with the people or person who is/are most important to you. Oh, you still may put in long hours in order to keep your job, to earn a raise or to simply shorten the time to retirement, but it is far less about some grand goal to become, say, president of the company and more about staving off the rumors that you've lost a step or that you are just coasting to retirement. Or it may just be necessary in these days of management squeezing every last second of productivity out of the workforce, sometimes just before laying them all off and sending the work to some far-off foreign land.
But you aren't doing it with your eyes on some mountaintop goal, some high accomplishment. In fact, you can't wait to get out of there and get back to the one(s) you love.
For some of us, however, that also is not achievable, because the one we love is not there. And that leaves these years, and that road that stretches out before us, just one long and lonely highway, devoid of any sights worth seeing or experiences worth having. Because by this time, we've learned that very little in life is worth a thing if you cannot share it with the one(s) you love. All it does is leave you one step beyond that pathetic co-worker who always comes to work and tells you, in agonizing detail, about his/her weekend, as if you were their very best friend in all of the world. Because, at least for them, you are. In fact, you probably are their only friend in all of the world, or at least the only person willing to listen to their incessant babbling.
You can't pour yourself into your work for that is a hollow, bottomless pit. And you have no reason to go home, for that, too, is an empty, hollow shell. All that is left for you is to be that loner, that person for whom company is rare, the one who must find solace, comfort and companionship with themselves. And accept that this is your lot in life for the years and, if you are unlucky, decades to come.
You can take some solace in this one fact: At least the road ahead is going to be shorter than the solitary, sad road you've already traveled.