Thomas Cooper, one of my favorite authors and professors, has a piece for Blackbird called What Is This? about his "average writing day."
"What about woodworking? Scrimshaw? Cabinetry? I bet those are gratifying jobs. You have a tangible result at the end of the day. When something is a piece of shit—say, a piece of shit chair—you know it’s a piece of shit chair. I should have worked with fucking wood. When people ask what I do, I could say, “I’m a fucking woodworker. I make shit. Tangible shit. Out of fucking wood.” TC