My general answer is that many of us are stuck doing things we really don't want to be doing. A lot of that comes from societal "norms"...the accumulation of stuff seems to be the main goal of the game. And that stuff better be the newest and greatest stuff; it's certainly worth camping out in front of WalMart for a day or two.
What actually makes us happy, and what society (run by the marketeers) tries to convince us of, are two very different things.