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swayvil

Switched to remodeling houses and landscaping.

I switched because this is better. Healthier. Saner. Happier. More in line with my long-term goals and general growth.

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Remodeling doesn't sound like a healthy activity.

It can be. It's physically taxing work but that's not a bad thing.

Living where you're remodeling at the same time is stressful.

I have no doubt that it is very fulfilling, but was thinking more of the dust, solvents, VOC, ie. the tiny things that are out to make you sick.

All those absolutely exist and you absolutely have to pay attention to them. And that is why your good friend Keen makes comfy ceramic-toed boots and your other good friend, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, makes respirators with high-flow P100 filters and WorkTunes Bluetooth headphones/ear protection.

I'm thankfully mostly done my last (for a while) remodel, but I spend a bunch of time in my wood shop, and I'm always struck by how much longer I can do stuff when I'm even just wearing an RZ mask even when I have the dust extraction on and the overhead filters going. Dead trees just make a lot of crap, let alone gypsum boards and the like.

Stress and sitting at a desk all day kill just as effectively as gypsum dust.

However it’s a lot easier for a remodeler to put on a P100 mask.

The greatest danger is prolonged intellectual concentration. It will drive you stark raving bonkers and that's no lie. And it's so slow and gentle that you'll never know it. And when everybody around you suffers from the same derangement, it's considered perfectly normal

It can be physical too. Pretty sure my GI issues were caused from the stress of shipping software.

Better, healthier how?, subjective maybe?. . Seems like you had a toxic job maybe?. I work in tech and all those good qualities apply.

If you allow the question, what long-term goals and general growth (goals) did you set yourself to come to this choice?

I'd rather not go into that. Sorry.

How did you get into remodeling? I like design and making things, it sounds interesting. Is it like those HGTV shows?

I was an old carpenter's assistant parttime for many years. And developed software part/full time for many years. Mixed together simultaneously. A gradual segue punctuated by several decisive acts

Any photos of your work? I work on houses in my spare time too... but its not a full time thing.

I'm afraid this sector is soon going to be saturated.

That's what people have been saying about software engineering for 20+ years. More substantively, I wouldn't count on the sector getting saturated. The US has under-built new homes for a decade, and available housing stock is extremely low. A lot of the money that would have gone to buying a new home is flowing into renovations.

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