Working outdoors

I was recently asked for some career advice, and I have a long post on that topic I may, or may not, post, but it's sort of related to this.

We have another thread up here on Working With Animals, the basic point of it being that there were, even fairly recently, (within the last century) a lot of jobs where people worked with animals.  Just recently it occurred to me, however, how many jobs there once were that were outdoor jobs that no longer are.

Indeed, it seems as if the entire western world has moved indoors, and not for the better really.

Working outdoors is something that a lot more people experienced on a daily basis than they do now.  Prior to the heavy mechanization of agriculture there were a lot more farmers and ranchers, for example.  People like freighters worked outdoors.  Policemen did. They still do, but at that time, they were truly outdoors.  Even people you wouldn't associate with outdoor careers, like lawyers and doctors, actually traveled locally a fair amount, in a way that was truly outdoors.

I don't think there's any replacement for being outdoors, and working inside and never seeing more of the outdoors than the space between the office and the car, or the parking lot and the store, isn't a good thing.  Of course, people know that, but what most people do, and even have little other choice but to do, is to replace being outdoors by necessity or vocation with a sort of anemic substitute.  I'm not blaming them, but an hour in a small city park in the middle of downtown isn't really being outdoors, in a true sense.  It's better than nothing, but it isn't the same thing.

I'm sure that in some sense all this indoors has a negative impact on our physical and psychological health.  With a nation in which so many are indoors, all the time, that's a fairly disturbing thing.