The real world is an awfully broad place. There are plenty of places you can go where mediocrity is not encouraged, people do more than 2-3 hours of real work a day, they're passionate about their work and curious about outside developments, and your specialties do matter. If you want to work there and find that you're not able to do that in your current job, change your job.

You tend to get the life you believe you deserve - if you're willing to put in the leg work to make it happen, you can very easily reconfigure the world around you to something you're satisfied with.