[Demiurge]

This article is very uplifting and easy to empathize with. However, I can only hope he ends up as happy as he might think he will. I've done farming when I was young as well as some manual labor jobs. It's not fun, you sweat a lot, your back hurts, the sunlight burns, at the end of the day you are physically burnt out so much that you can't actually think. I am much more happy to be closing tickets that are undoing previous tickets, while sipping white chocolate mocha. Good luck with everything :)

[dougk16]

I had sort of the opposite experience. I moved furniture for a number of years...manual labor at its finest. I put on 10 pounds of muscle, melted any extra fat from my body, slept like a baby every night, and had no back problems compared to slumping in a chair all day. It was certainly hard work, but I look back on it with a simple fondness that I can't conjure for all my past office jobs. All I see is this weird fluorescent limbo in my emotional memory despite all the interesting software I've worked on.

[Demiurge]

Since I've done cleaning, not moving, I think I can still suppose that it is quite different than farm work. I can see how it's physically hard, but I think I would actually prefer moving. When I move heavy stuff, and I moved probably 10 times, I have a whole routine for picking stuff up correctly, and it's kind of like squats. Anyway, I think farming might have actually given you a more visceral experience than moving. In general, I think the hardest things we used to do when growing up are our brightest memories. For many people I know from Russia, it is the army.

The point I'm trying to make is that our experiences are complicated and are a combination of many circumstances. Programming is certainly more abstract and hard to remember as an overcoming experience, but it is what you make of it, and what you want to make of it in the future. If you ended up in software, there must be a reason for it, and hopefully it's more than just pay. I'm an introvert, I've always loved reading, programming, and abstract tasks, so I am happy. Maybe for you, programming is not as interesting as being social, physical, traveling.

Maybe the author is more like you than me, in which case, great. To each their own!

[atmosx]

Actually, I do both daily. I program only for fun, but work on the computer and also do manual work. I also started a little bit with farming, but for pleasure mostly and healthy food, not as a way of living.

It's very good thing to switch between totally different tasks, makes you miss all of them occasionally and in the end you remember only the good things about each one of them :-)

[Demiurge]

There are things I liked about it, like delicious food I grew myself, watering can be kind of fun, at the start... and I try to get out there. But picking weeds, digging earth, pushing/carrying heavy things... gets tiring even if it's just 4 hours a day.