Work

I listened to a podcast today with Owen Benjamin and Bert Kreischer wherein they discussed manual labor and the benefits thereof.  I've done manual labor my whole life.  I've been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a half hour lunch break for ten years now.  I have a bachelor's degree, my father has a masters in education, my mom's parents were both teachers, and her mother also had a masters in English.  All of my grandparents were also farmers, as has the family been (mostly) since we landed on this continent.  As far as I can tell, most of my family has been in manual labor for centuries, based on our countries of origin and religious association.  There is a small connection to some royalty and some outlaws, but mostly we're just normal people. 
I have come to enjoy manual labor more than my brief stints at desk work.  I have also discovered that the more a job pays, the worse it is.  I used to make "X" per month and that job was terrible.  The sacrifices I had to make were large.  So, I quit and got a job that netted me half the pay but was MUCH more tolerable.  Thanks to a bunch of people gambling on junk mortgages, that company went out of business and now that my profession life has seemed to have regained some stability, I'm now making a quarter of "X" but I have achieved a level of pleasantry in life that I enjoy greatly.  Now's the time to keep what I have gained and now try to grow the "X" factor.  However, I digress.
There is a certain and very solid appreciation for manual labor that those who haven't made a hobby of it can't recognize but I believe those who do other work have the same opportunity to feel it.  See, you have certain skills and abilities that people pay you to exercise that I don't.  I can do things you can't and for these skills I am compensated.  The pay may be different but the satisfaction in a job well done is the same. I can stand back at the end of the day and identify concrete objects I have created, tell you how I did it and why.  Manual labor is similar to meditation or doing menial chores or riding motorcycles in that it either requires all your concentration or very little, but you're doing something physically.  I always enjoyed a job that at one point requires total concentration and then at another, very little.  I once was discussing a holster I had made with a guy and he was impressed I had made it myself and said he could never do such a thing.  I later found out he was a retired heart surgeon.  Now clearly he is capable of many things I am not, but he respected my craft just as I do his.  All that to say, any job done well and with pure intentions is valid and valuable, no matter how manual it is.