I still feel my life was much more interesting back then. We were poor but, paradoxically, we ate better than I eat now. The tasks had much more variety to them, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening every day and requiring your attention. There was new thing to be done/fixed all the time and I would never get bored. We would be doing everything for ourselves no matter how unskilled we were in the task, you had to figure it out while you were doing it. There was plenty of variety between seasons and there was plenty of free time to spend with the family.
I like my current job and it pays very well but I feel my daytime consists of only work and entertainment. There is almost no variety to it and during 3-4 weeks of vacation I have annually I feel like I have no idea what to do with the time to truly recharge my batteries.