About 6 years ago, I transitioned from "white collar work" to "blue collar work". It wasn't exactly what I expected.
I had grown tired of my job. It was boring. I did little more than take money, record transactions and make sure employees weren't stealing. The job was on the edge of legal. My wife and I had new born twins. I was gone all night and slept through most of the day. I was providing for my family financially but the schedule I was on wasn't going to work once they hit school age.
The money was ok but I felt with a little effort I could transition to an "acceptable" job and eventually make the same kind of money. Having a BA in Political Science and being 37 years old were bad enough. I had spent the previous ~12 years running an underground poker game so my resume looked like shit. I called my place The Mongrel Social Club (and later the Mongrel Event Center). Below is a screen shot of one of the sites that listed games in and around Houston, I don't know why they listed it twice.
The situation decided for me: I had to teach myself a skill (or set of skills) that were in demand. I went to trade school and rcv'd a AAS in Industrial Automation. Then I started working in the oil field as a junior hand to a senior automation tech. I made $18/hr which meant I had to figure out a way to work at least 60 hours a week.
The last time I broke a sweat at work was taking groceries to cars at a Randall's supermarket when I was 17.
Well, I sweated a lot. and killed rattlesnakes. and dug 100 ft long trenches with a rockbar and shovel. I was on call 24/7, worked my ass off, displaced my supervisor, became the supervisor, opened a regional office, grew the business and became bored again. My best option was to open a business offering the same kind of services (which I did, it's what I do now) so that I could earn decent $$ without having to work 60+ hours a week.
From a vendor's perspective, oil companies are 2nd to government work, they are so disorganized, so divided by internal politics or maybe they're just so big that efficiency is impossible: they end up paying a dollar for a dime's worth of work. In that way, they're good to work for but if productivity (y'know getting shit done) is a priority then I doubt blue collar work will satisfy you even if the pay is good.
It's been a 6 year lesson to learn something I already knew: money is not the most important aspect of any job. It's almost like we should choose what we want to do, what we're interested in rather than choosing based on $$ or prestige or what our families will approve of.
My office space adventure reinforced something I should have already known: Real change comes from the inside.
