When you’re job hunting and opportunity literally knocks on your front door, you don’t say no. Even if it’s your neighbour offering part-time, ‘barely above minimum wage’ physical work—so far removed from your world of being paid to sit down and press buttons on a laptop.

And so I became, at least for a few days a week, a “canvas stretcher” at a company that supplies frame-mounted canvasses to artists and art-supply stores.

Two years ago, I’d have lied and told my neighbour I didn’t have the time. But I realise I’ve made a life out of saying no to things and then regretting it. And though I’m one of those whose handiwork is characterised by a general, shall I say, roughness around the edges, I said I’d give it a go.

Now I ride to an industrial park and work with pneumatic staplers, sanding blocks and fabric-pulling pliers. I get home covered in sawdust, finding splinters in socks, eyebrows and knuckles, my hands red and tender. I had a new injury every day for the first few days—cuts from a razor blade, blood blisters from being pinched by wooden frames, that painful jab in my thumbnail bed from the little pliers we use to remove staples. Then of course the pain in my hands and wrists, those delicate little darlings that usually have no heavy work to do at all.

The rhythm of the hourly rate job is just as alien. I’m used to workplaces where you trickle in and get coffee, taking frequent breaks for chats, walks, or even Foosball matches. Here, the sporadic conversation is always over or under ongoing tasks. Lunchbreaks are staggered and fluid.

It’s a common work ethic. Our daily picture of life in the US is so different from the ones presented to us by people who don’t live there. (If you’re an expat in the Middle East, you’ll be familiar with this phenomenon of people back home simply deciding what your life is like.) There’s our neighbour J. for example, in her mid-fifties. After a day of office administration, she comes home for a little while, then goes out to her evening job at a department store. She gets a full day off only every few months and looks exhausted all the time, hobbling slightly because her feet are in constant pain.

Or there’s D. a CNC machinist who, 15 years ago, used to earn $30 an hour. But today, even though he’s part of a chain that makes parts for helicopters, artificial hearts, and aeroplanes, he earns just $15 an hour. That’s barely more than I make.

Sometimes I feel like such an imposter. I’m doing this job for fun, for the life experience. I’ve laughed with my friend about how I no longer need to live in Manhattan with a parrot for that cool back-of-book author biography. I can just stop if I don’t like how rough my hands are getting. And though they’re getting quite rough indeed, I can’t stay away. From the manual time-stamp clock, to the pistol shots of compressed-air tools, to the Friday evening cash payments, there’s a brutal honesty to this job: a clarity of connection between task and reward, and that pat on the back every evening of physical exhaustion.

That job at a desk with a computer can take its time. I have some long overdue handiwork to revisit and neaten up—those rough edges of mine that are folded back and pinned down with every hissy “BAP!” of that heavy stapler. Every day, I make a stack of blank canvasses.

Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, USA.