I struggle with this occasionally. My partner is a hydrographer and her job is to create electronic navigation charts for the Western Canadian and Arctic coastline. This involves surveying the waters, studying tides, and generating the charts from all of the data. Sometimes she gets to go for weeks or a month at a time on the surveying boats, or they fly out to check on remote tide stations.

The rest of her time is much like ours, just sitting at a desk tapping away at a keyboard or mouse. But 1.5-2 months of her year are booked by her employer to be off surveying. They see whales, go fishing and dive for food in their spare time, visit remote waters in the arctic or BC coast, stay in interesting communities along the coast, and all kinds of neat stuff.

Of course it isn't perfect and the ~10 months spent charting is so tedious that it gives me mild discomfort from a distance. I think the value of having quality navigation charts for the ocean is a little known but incredibly important asset to any place in the world though. Vessels travelling safely is the backbone of trade, tourism, fishing, and many kinds of recreation. I suspect there's some satisfaction in that at least.