@jabel A year or two ago I came across an article or podcast that was exploring the move to work from home that increased during Covid and something that was discussed was the historical newness of people "going off to work".
It began with the rise of cities and increased over the last 150 or so years. I suppose it's obvious but work from home is the norm for most of human history. I always enjoy being reminded that much of we know as a norm is actually the weird experiment of human history. Our normal, the "civilized" organization of "developed" nations, may yet prove to have been an anomaly and a mistake. Perhaps the atomization of community life and extended families into nuclear families and highly indivdualized lifestyles are more a service to capitalism, creating physical, monetary insecurity and increased consumption.
The more radical labor unions like the IWW of the early 1900's called it wage slavery.
@jabel Josef Pieper (Leisure: The Basis of Culture) would substantially agree with your "blue-collar attitude toward work." His is one of the indispensable little books I try to read every few years.
@ReaderJohn I discovered it through James Schall's book Another Sort of Learning, in which he has a list of "Schall's Unlikely List of Books to Keep Sane By." That book is where I learned my love of book lists.
@jabel Book recommendations coming faster than I can read them, but Schall is on my list of possible acquisitions.
@ReaderJohn To be fair, I don’t really remember much about the content of Schall’s book, apart from his excellent practice of stitching books lists into his text.