There seems to be a common fantasy about giving up white collar life and doing physical, manual work. My partner feels this way. I feel this way. My friends feel this way. There’s this pull to give up being at a desk, starting a farm or opening a bar or cafe.

Why does this pull exist?

One thing I’ve noticed from a lot of these conversations (either had or read) is that it always involves opening or starting something. Never joining someone else’s dream. This goes for me, too. I’ve often dreamt of starting my own cafe, film studio, woodworking shop or creative agency.

I strongly believe this is because a lot of knowledge/tech workers start working in their chosen field because they enjoy the act of making. Specifically, making things that solve problems in creative ways. As soon as you start working for someone else, that muddies the waters of solving problems. You start to get more removed from the problem you’re really solving. You instead work on the abstractions to solve the problems: communication / political issues, tooling / infrastructure, or spending most of your time choosing what to work on, not working on it.

That distance and loss of connection to the work can be demoralizing. It saps your energy to create.

I think this is also why a lot of tech workers job hop so frequently. Two to three years at a tech company is the norm. Sure, it’s easier to get a salary bump when you job hop, but you’re also forced to absorb a new context. Forced to try and learn about a new problem space. Even if, ultimately, you end up stuck in the same loops. The context in which you fall into those patterns changes just enough to feel close to the problem again.

There’s a second piece to this, too: the lack of tactility in knowledge work. We spend so much time dealing with ephemeral ideas, tools and implementations that it’s easy to feel like nothing has true staying power. It’s not the same as walking into a room and seeing things you’ve built or designed every single day. Sure, you could boot up your web app and click around every day, or open your P/L spreadsheet and update a few cells. But you’re not embedded in it. It’s just another set of pixels floating around in the digital ether.

Both of these things, distance from the problem and distance from anything physical, point toward the same fix: own something, build something with your hands, be close enough to touch the thing you made.

But I think this dream crumbles the same way the white collar one does.

I fully recognize this is likely just a case of the grass being greener. I’m sure a majority of bar owners and woodworkers feel the same way after a while. I don’t think most humans are built to do the same thing day in and out. We like novelty. It’s a hard-wired trait for most. So, I’m sure if I did switch to becoming a full-time woodworker or filmmaker, I’d eventually get tired. The same processes. The same people problems. It would amount to me seeking something new again anyway.

And even before that boredom sets in, the greenfield feeling fades on its own. You get customers, need to hire employees, or just have to deal with other people. The bubble bursts. It’s no longer just you and your ideas. You have to start answering to people. It gums up the works. It’s distracting. And suddenly, it can become harder to parse the signal from the noise. It makes you want to start over again.

So both paths erode. The dream job and the day job. The white collar comfort and the fantasy of physical work. Neither one stays pure for long. Which is maybe why so many of us end up staying in the field anyway, even when we’re burnt out on it. The safety and comfort that comes with a lot of knowledge work is too good, and worth the tradeoff of creative discomfort. If you’re lucky, you have enough free time in your life to pursue hobbies that fill your creative cup. Or, you’ll go work for a smaller company where the overhead isn’t as big. A place where you’re closer to the problem you’re solving, and have less people in the way. Even if the risk is slightly greater than somewhere more established.

I’m thinking about this a lot lately because my career is at an inflection point. It’s uncertain. It’s making me wonder if the future that’s being laid out is one I want to be a part of. It’s making me question why I started working as a programmer turned product person in the first place.

It feels like the digital space is eroding faster every day. Even though there’s still so much good about it, I can’t help but feel that good will be overtaken so fast. And I don’t know how much longer I want to be a part of it. Which is why I think the pull to reality, to tangible life, is so appealing right now. Not because the dream of tangible work is more stable. But because, for now, it feels like it’s decomposing more slowly. I’m just not sure if the uncertainty of giving up the white collar comforts is greater than the uncertainty of what’s ahead in the digital sphere.