A day on a farm
A reminder of the benefits of working in the tech industry
This summer, I visited my family's farm where I grew up.
These photos are of me working with my sister, who is 69, to bring down a small dead tree for firewood.
Our family never depended on this small farm as our primary source of income, but the land still takes enough work to be a good reminder of the difference between knowledge work and farm work.
I respect farmers very much.
They work a lot harder for a lot less.
Ask any farmer, it's always either too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry.
And if it's none of those things then everyone has a huge crop with the result that prices drop too low. Farming makes Bitcoin look stable and predictable :-)
It makes me grateful for what I'm able to do.
Audience Insights
I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience, including:
Flint Weiss shared “My father had a strong opinion that I finish college (would be the first on his side of the family) and get a white collar job. When I was in high school, he kept a regular cadence of heavy manual labor summer jobs for me to do (like the day he came home with a pickup truck full of rock slag slag and said: "Son, dig up the dirt between the driveway tracks and lay this here rock slag in there. And when you empty out the truck, I'll go get more so you just keep digging." Or the summer we re-roofed the house in 100 degee humid coastal South Carolina weather, carrying up 40# bundles of shingles on your shoulder, as you do.) to incent me to a white collar job. It worked.”
If you find yourself thinking “My pay is too low, I am stressed out, or I do not want to play this game of politics” (all common remarks) revisit this post or even better do a few days of farm work to put the contract into perspective.
Best-selling author and researcher on vulnerability, Brené Brown, found that folks who can lean fully into joy, have one thing in common, gratitude (Brené’s hypothesis was spirituality).
Jeff Bezos spent every summer growing up (as early as 4 years old) with his grandparents in their South Texas ranch. Jeff reflected “I learned so much from my grandfather because he was – and I think this is true of many people in rural areas – very self-reliant [and] very resourceful. They can get things done on their own. That kind of self-reliance really made a big impression on me. When things don’t work, you have to back up and try again. Each time you back up and try again, you’re using your resourcefulness, you’re using self-reliance. You’re trying to invent your way out of a box.” Jeff and his grandfather worked on everything from fixing equipment, building fences, to suturing animals.
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