Dude - you are not implying that Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is pointless. In fact, I would argue that Faux-Victorian horror fantasy is chic now. You'll be a millionzaires.

Also recall that most of the writers we look up to and admire these days (who made a point, as I believe you put it) also wrote schlock crap to pay the bills.So if you wanna write... write. Don't *expect* to make a point. (I'll bet you $100 no one will remember "Atonement" in 100 years.) Authors that *make points* are boring, pedantic and really not there.

As to your feeling empty, vapid, etc.: there's a lot of bad in the world. Everyone handles it different. Your coworkers ignore it (if they're even cognizant of it, which most people nowadays are). Some people (like the folks I work for) try to do our bit with what we know and love to do. You can do your bit too. Even if your writing is fantasy horror, it doesn't mean it can't be about the real world horrors. Steven King did this fairly well in his early books in the Dark Tower Series - Gunslinger and the Drawing of the Three were basically set in a horror universe where demons and magicians and warlocks are real and alive... and yet the truly horrific things were the mundane horrors, not the fantastical horrors. See also Buffy for a more pop example.

You're pro'lly just feeling depressed about your job, which, most people hate their jobs. Jobs exist to pay the bills, which have to be paid unless you're independently wealthy.

And you really don't *have* to pretend you like everyone else. I'm sure if you told people you found American Idol to be depressingly banal you'll find some folk who you an connect with on actual common grounds. You don't have to always agree to be agreeable after all.

Your writing is not pointless or meaningless. You are an awesome person, and I can sympathize with having to put on false faces when on the job. I sell comic books to rednecks, and all the high minded and fancy books that I like are passed over by guys who like Spider-Man 3, so I have to pretend I like them when they get under my skin. It does suck have to pretend like that, but it is a job. And the job shouldn't stick with you when you leave the office. It's like taking your shoes off when you get home and change your clothes. That part is officially done for a bit.

Please don't shoot yourself in both of your writing feet. Writing realistic fiction is not unimaginative, and neither is writing horror and fantasy. H.P. Lovecraft considered himself a hack, and his influence in all types of genres is still being felt all these years later. Also, he was not a hack. You are also awesome and pretty sweet =).

Friend, do what you love! And do just enough that you don't love so you can afford to do what you love.

Should what you love change, follow that. If it brings you back to what you loved in the first place, then all the better.

At some point the choices you've made so far may present you with something so amazingly wonderful that everything you've grudgingly done before seems suddenly to shine in crystal clarity, as if everything was leading to that. It may even present you with two or three wonderful things that you've got to choose among. That is, you get to choose which one.

There are some amazing people doing amazing things. You happen to be one of them. Keep on going.

If anyone tells you comedy, science fiction, or horror is banal or meaningless just because it will *never* be critically acclaimed, tell them to read "World War Z," by Max Brooks, and DARE them to look you in the eye and say they never teared up.  And, to use an extreme example... people read a lot of "critically important" literature because they're told they have to (this is a gross simplification, I know, because most of it is, in fact, good, but that isn't why most people end up reading it, and it wouldn't be nearly as widely read if it wasn't critically acclaimed).  No one reads, for example, Jim Butcher because they feel like they have to in order to "count," but he's making a pretty solid living off it.  Is he Poe?  No.  (Neither was Poe while he was alive, as you well know.)  Will he ever be?  Probably not.  But lots of people devote hours of their lives to reading his work, enjoying it, and talking about it.  Leads one to think he might be on to something...

Write what you like, amiga, and share it when it's ready.

I give my tithe to Lutheran World Relief.  At least then it feels like my work is doing something good in the world, and that I am doing something to contribute to the well-being of humanity.

As far as feeling alienated at work, I totally understand.  Most Marines (including officers) are overgrown high school / college partiers who have nothing to talk about besides drinking, sexual promiscuity, sports, and TV.  None of which are all that important to me.  But it's different because it's well known how little I care about that stuff.

As far as your writing being meaningless - no, it isn't, as long as there is someone (you, not to mention most if not all of your readership) care about it.