Work is hard. I’m against bullshit jobs and exploiting labor, but there’s no world without people getting up, getting off their phones, and getting to work. There’s a nascent sentiment that we would go back to “how it was,” and that we should only work to do things that are beautiful.

We should have more time for that. But your shit goes somewhere. Your trash goes somewhere. And you need to eat. As someone that’s shoveled shit, hauled trash, grown food, and hunts, that’s not easy work. You can’t just wake up one morning with the clarity that no one should do anything they don’t want to do. Everyone needs to do things they don’t want to do.

Work is honorable, and the hardest work I’ve done in my life was the lowest paying, most disrespected, most valuable work I’ve ever done. The fact that we’ve lost sight of that is troubling.

Pay people well. Very well. And if you went to college for it, then you should get paid less than the people that do the actual work, so they can get paid more. Cut the top end off most companies. They went to college too. I went to college, I work a white-collar job. I’m happy and financially comfortable. I know for the real workers to get paid more, I’ll need to be paid less. A college degree doesn’t mean you deserve to be paid more.

That’s just my opinion, and I could be (and likely am) wrong. I’ve been wrong a lot in my life. I’m a better person for it, because I realized it. So there’s a lot of evidence to support the fact that my opinion is wrong. But because I’ve been wrong so often and have tried to grow each time, I’m less wrong than I used to be. I wake up each morning comforted by how I’ve handled my failures.

Success is a fleeting feeling for me. Earned knowledge from my failures and the knowledge that I’ve tried to recognize them and improve myself each time makes me sleep quite happy at night. And when I’m doing something, my fear of failure shrinks every year.