The 'simple life' jobs are also taxing, but just in different ways. Bosses yelling at you to get work done ASAP, union bullshit, and reletivly low pay (unless you own your own business).
While there are some days I wish I was doing some head math and watching a lathe make cuts on a electric motor shaft, in the end I'm happy with where I ended up.
Just posted this so you know that the grass isn't always greener 100% of the time!
While very different fields a lot of the skills to be successful at one are applicable to the other.
In school for welding while also working at the machine shop. Making ~10.20/hr machining parts to repair electric motors. I start thinking about my future a bit more as I was making money (lol @ me thinking 10.20/hr was money but I was 19 and working more than I ever did). I started thinking about the doomsday scenarios where if this machine shop closed down, what would I do? The world was going more toward CNC machining. While today there is a place for a manual machinist, what place will it have when I'm 50? This fact, alongside the fact I could make more at Arby's, led me to quit.
I decided to give another trade a shot, which was plumbing. A family friend was a solo plumber and I inquired about being a helping hand. I enjoyed the work, but my boss wasn't exactly pleasant to work for. I got a decent pay raise in comparison to my last job, but exactly 0 vacation or benefits. In the beginning I was fine with this as he was 'doing me a favor' by showing me the ropes, but in the end it didn't work out.
When that job was winding down, I decided to go back to school for computers. I built computers in my day and I knew my way around which led me to pick this 'trade' up next. I started applying for L1 help desk jobs and got in with this company doing internal IT. Very thankful I ended up here as it was NOT a call center. We fielded maybe 10 calls a day, sometimes we had as little as 2, so I had a lot of downtime to study up on the next role. I signed up for LinuxAcademy and grinded courses.
LinuxAcademy has cloud servers, where I learned Linux on. The corporate security team caught that (oops), which is where I met them. Eventually they had an opening for a SecOps Analyst and now I'm here :).
Congratulations!
Leave the Valley, get a real company/job.
The rest of the world does not operate like Rome.
On YouTube I discovered a channel of a cobbler called Bedo's Leatherworks. It's relaxing to watch I thought this is a calming thing to watch during these crazy times plus my dad is ill (not making for less stress! I'm literally cracking my own teeth).
I thought what a great job it's working with your hands, artistic, and useful.
Clue - what others think about you now (or ever) won't matter a dime. What kind of lifestyle you project externally won't either. Life is damn too short, and it gets 'faster' as we get older.
Another clue - most people when old end up regretting at least some parts of their lives. Only you can know what it means not ending up like one of them.
As with most human motivators, there is the cheap version (fame across everyone) and the sustainable one (respect among true, trusted peers)
If anything it’s less important as you’re less likely to see 80 than any preceding year.
Edit: looks like you might enjoy reading "How will you measure your life?". Tweet summary here [0] - I made it this morning [1].
[0]: https://twitter.com/booktweets6/status/1330600066176880641