My husband works one of those hard physical jobs, can concur that he's happier than the vast majority of people. He says that he could never work a desk job, that it'd do his head in.
I have a strange job, where it's very office heavy but at the same time there's a lot of heavy lifting to do. I'm kind of a split worker- I need the brains to understand a complicated company computer system for inventory and invoicing, as well as being able to operate a forklift and move really heavy shit on/off pallets.
The thing I hate most about my job is being out doing the physical stuff, while knowing there's a ton of shit to do in the office. That's more stressful to me than being in the office working on something and knowing there's a huge amount of physical labor awaiting me. I know I can handle all aspects of the job, but it's definitely the networking/communication with off-site people that's the hardest... and typically there's a female secretary in that role for most companies, but my branch is really tiny so everyone on my team is basically doing 2-4 different jobs.
He has a similar job to you, in fact, and he has the same mentality about the physical labour/office stuff too.
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