I just finished my second year of schooling as an apprentice electrician in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I’m still about 1300 working hours short of actually graduating my second year, but, whatever. I’ll get there. There were a lot of reasons I decided to become an electrician. This quote from Mary Oliver about work really resonated with me—“I was very careful never to take an interesting job. . . I took lots of jobs. But if you have an interesting job you get interested in it.” She said that her love was writing, and she didn’t want to do anything else. She specifically stayed away from teaching because she knew it would consume her time and attention.
I think that’s part of the draw of manual labor. I do use my mind, of course, especially while a lot of this is still new to me, but there is a lot of time for my mind to wander during the day, to think and to wonder. I don’t find the work particularly riveting. I do find a flow state when I’m making up panels, which is enjoyable, but when I go home, the job stays there—no emails, no lingering problems to hum about in my brain. My tools and the wire and the conduit are all there, and I’m fully here, on the picnic blanket, reading, thinking, and writing.