Several of my friends left the IT sector to pursue some work related to farming and food production (farm, bakery, cake shop, bio foods, etc. are for some reason very popular choices). Anecdotally almost without exception the new job turned out to be just as much of a slog after some time, except with much lower financial reward, if any.
I think sometimes it's just easier to think the grass is greener elsewhere. Hobbies are often not as fun when they become a job, a necessity.
You can burn out just as easily with a hobby-turned-job if you're overdoing it. IT was probably a hobby before it became a job for many of today's engineers. The solution is to avoid overdoing it rather than to jump from one hobby-job to the next, maybe ruining them all in the process.
Yes, I grew up in a blue collar home and understood the reality of that type of work enough to know to stay away from it. At the same time, a lot of knowledge work is very unsatisfying because it's often so abstract and even if meaningful (and there's plenty of bullshit software work out there) is such a small part of a larger system that it's hard to see your contribution. (I believe Marx would call it alienation of labor).
Growing plants or building buildings or baking bread is the opposite; you can immediately see the product and get satisfaction from that. But given the economic realities, it's probably better if you can keep those as hobbies and slog through the day job.
I struggle with this too, and to some degree at least with my specific job and lots of the ones I see posted, it feels like its not the illusion of alienation, but that its actually correct and that the work is actually useless.
At least for me personally I find it so very hard to be motivated to do something that doesn't matter for 40 hours a week. Which is easier than something that directly harms the world I guess..
I think sometimes it's just easier to think the grass is greener elsewhere. Hobbies are often not as fun when they become a job, a necessity.
You can burn out just as easily with a hobby-turned-job if you're overdoing it. IT was probably a hobby before it became a job for many of today's engineers. The solution is to avoid overdoing it rather than to jump from one hobby-job to the next, maybe ruining them all in the process.