Had to pick between a steady city job and moving rural for a trade gig 8 years ago

I was working a desk job in Omaha making $38k a year, but a buddy offered me a spot in his construction crew up in a small town. I chose the rural move because I was tired of staring at a screen all day. After six months of framing houses and learning on the job, I caught on with a local contractor and now I run my own crew. The pay topped out around $55k eventually, but the real win was not hating every morning. Anyone else make a big geographic shift for work and have it work out different than you figured?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ryan15d ago

That desk job feeling is brutal. The soul-crushing part isn't even the pay, it's the boredom. Sounds like you traded a ceiling for actual freedom.

barbara39915d ago

Oh man, I feel you on that boredom thing (it really gets you in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't been there). The clock just crawls when you're not doing anything that matters, and it feels like you're wasting your whole life staring at spreadsheets that don't mean a thing. At least now she's got some kind of spark back, even if the money isn't pouring in yet. That's got to be worth something, right? I'd take a messy, interesting life over a clean, boring one any day.