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Comment by spiderfarmer | Hacker News Reader

I grew up on a farm. I don’t care what the author says, manual labor is very rewarding. I built my own office, carport, horse stable, chicken coop and many other projects in the evenings after already exhausting work, and if I could make more in construction, I’d pick that over an office job any day of the week.

If you take good care of your body and health, it doesn’t have to be as bad as you think. But a lot of tradies think eating healthy, stretching, eye protection, gloves, etc. are “gayyyyy”.

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I had some time and decided to renovate my kitchen. I'm doing everything myself: plasterboard/drywall, flooring, electrical, plumbing, cabinets, painting, etc. I had time to learn the standards and do it all the 'right' way, and I'm almost done.

On one hand it's been incredibly enriching and rewarding. I'll never look at a room the same again. Some areas, like woodworking, also surprisingly required much more deep thinking than I'd anticipated.

On the other hand, I couldn't imagine going through half the nonsense I went though for someone else, especially an ungrateful/fussy/penny-pinching customer.

> I don’t care what the author says

Fortunately, the author says:

> The trades are more physical than working in an office, and some people find this — and working outdoors, where much trades work is performed — liberating. Some derive great pleasure from achieving a flow-like state of mind from performing specific physical tasks. Some people find it deeply rewarding to physically make things and to see progress and improvement in doing so over time. Some people derive a deep sense of camaraderie from physically toiling with other people. It could be that any of these, especially when combined with a low sensitivity toward financial compensation or status, makes the trades a better fit than white-collar employment.

That doesn’t say anything about taking care of your body though. A better part of my family works construction and it’s only the uncle that smokes, thinks proper posture is for wimps and lives off microwave pizza that constantly complains about his joints.

The number one reason I am unhappy about AI killing white collar and for a short time making blue collar lucrative is that for all the shit talk about office politics, I’ll take it any day over the school yard bully “banter” shit that the most average construction site has between their employees.

You can do physically demanding jobs without embracing every stupid meme of blue collarism. You don’t need a mullet. You don’t need to waste your money on lifted trucks. You don’t need to hate liberals. You don’t need to claim electricians have “women’s hands”, etc

The trades are full of crabs in a bucket.

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