Dang, sion...if your job becomes drudgery, you need to be doing something else. For the last year, I've sensed that you are not happy where you are.
Of course, I'm an outsider, so I "know all and see all" but as a friend, I wouldn't dare to suggest you do anything you haven't already thought of!
I "enjoyed" my trip to Vegas, but I was VERY anxious to get home. I even had some dork try an proposition me on the way to Vegas! LOL! (Reminded me why I'm single...)
Wow. You certainly do! It's hard to recall why, but it did ratchet up about a year ago. Maybe it was because I'd really stepped into the spotlight in my industry and at the office, well... nothing changed. Then we got bought by an industry giant, a new boss was entering the picture, but ultimately... nothing changed.
The job isn't drudgery, exactly (well some of it is, immensely so, but I can easily tolerate a whole bunch of drudgery, even highly-technical drudgery, if all else goes well); it's just a matter of being ignored. For good or bad, much of my technical career I've produced stuff beyond what people think possible.
But today I don't even get so much as an "attaboy" -- they simply have no idea, nor do they seem to care, what I do day to day. And when I do achieve a score for Our Side... nobody notices.
Yah, I think it's time to go. Working for a mega-corporation more than three times the size of the city I grew up in is the pits.