Being a manual laborer

It's a weird contradiction, at least for me. It's common for blue collar, laborious jobs to be seen as "less-than". The jobs parents point out to their kids and say, "do well in school honey, or you'll end up like HIM."

And I believed that. Through my formative years, I didn't openly disrespect those with blue collar jobs (shit, my dad always has had one), but I KNEW I would never come to that point. Where I'm desperate for hours, and going to work before the sun rises. To not be in some cushy job making six figures. I feel weird saying I work at a landscaping company because I BELIEVE that other people see it as less than. I feel the need to try to qualify it, to make the tree climber thing seem cool. Make it straightforward and nonchalant as "climbing trees and cutting them down" in the same way I talked about the Army- "shoot guns and jump out of planes".

And yet if anyone EVERY openly disrespected my line of work, I would absolutely annihilate them. Especially if they're some white collar cubicle worker. The popular notion of how the office sucks, how WFH is the new big thing, and how everyone is getting sicker from working inside and sitting all day..... everyone treats these things are unavoidable. They think we need fancy routines, extra things to do to make up for it. And sure, due to the nature of our society, somebody will always have to do those jobs. But all that sickness? The obesity, the eye strain, the boredom from meetings? The chronic stress from checking emails at home?

All of those are avoided by working outside. Sure, the people I work with aren't the HEALTHIEST ever, but I'd bet they're moreso than a lot of white collar workers. We're constantly moving. We're outside, under natural lights, making our bodies adapt to changing conditions. We don't have meetings. And since the trees stay at the job site, I can't take work home with me. When we leave work, we LEAVE work.

The real dilemma with this is scalability. I don't necessarily ENJOY the job everyday, but that makes me enjoy it in the big picture. I enjoy the shitty days. I enjoy freezing my ass off. I'll enjoy sweating my balls off. I like sweating, getting dirty, doing work that feels primal. It makes you feel human. You can't get that sitting in front of a computer. But how do I make MORE money, without trading MORE time? You get paid more per hour. Which means acquiring skills and experience. Which takes time. It's a little frustrating. And if I'm not doing the sales (which isn't dirty or primal), I'm beholden to the person or company who is selling. And that means I need to have other avenues of income.