The television show “Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

"The Case for Working With Your Hands," By MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD
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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell

I agree. I am an engineering professor (recently retired) and administrator or a university / industry centre of excellence. If it isn't yet another meeting, it is typing on the keyboard. I enjoy it enough to keep at it. But give me one day working on the old car and I am more refreshed that if I had a month's holiday. It doesn't have to be mechanics either; it could be fixing up a very old family homestead that any sane person would have long condemmed.

If I had to sum it up in a sentence it would be:
The only real joy in life is doing something well that you value (be it auto mechanics, teaching, administrating, family...).

Bill

I read the article when it come out and I found it engaging, and gutsy too.
Although I read this one first.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/books/29book.html?scp=1&sq=crawford%20motorcycle&st=cse