Journalera

I did an honest half day's work.

A friend hired me to help paint the inside of a shipping container - you know, those large metal boxes seen riding train cars and on ships docked in port cities. This container is stacked on top of another, along with many others inside a big warehouse where artists are using them as studio space. It's an interesting concept of reuse, but this post is about labor.

Physical. Unskilled. Sweaty. Tedious. Labor.

Technically, painting is skilled labor, but there wasn't much skill in what I was tasked to do. Cover the primer. Don't fall out of the container. Don't spill paint on the floor. For 5 hours I spread a thin veneer of Robin's egg blue paint up and down the metal walls. Wax on, wax off. Sweep up, sweep down.

Lordy, I am tired. Falling down tired. Barely able to stand in the shower, short of breath for half an hour after arriving home, hardly capable of chewing much less sustaining witty repartee at the dinner table -- I think this is what is meant by the term "bone tired."

And to think, guys line up outside lumber yards starting at 6:00 am to do this every day, for 10 hours, not 5. And then they do it again. And then they do it again.