Life Lessons I Learned While Working Manual Labor

I am the living embodiment of a sedentary lifestyle.

I work in an office, I spend four hours a day in a car, and I read and write in my spare time. The most non-sitting that occurs in my day is my nightly routine of doing the dishes, where my six-foot-three frame has to stoop just to reach the bottom of the sink.

This general lack of movement and exertion is the only thing I miss about working manual labor.

I’m still paying off college and business school — and will be for the next several hundred years — but I helped myself a little bit every summer and winter by working as much as I could. In high school, I had two jobs. One was at a mini golf/driving range center and the other was as a bank teller. In addition, I would sometimes spend a Saturday or off day with a friend doing landscaping and other various jobs.

I also grew up in an area that was somewhere between rural and suburban. Our neighbor had a barn, a dilapidated and empty chicken coop, a horse for a pet, and an outhouse. My parents owned four acres and the upkeep was substantial. My father was a poor city kid growing up, but he was the suburban white American male poster child, living an hour outside of the city and taking the train to an office downtown, but on weekends, he was almost a farmer. Helping him, I did nearly…