alt Hacker NewsWhen my wife was diagnosed with cancer and eventually went into remission, I didn’t really process what was happening at first. I was completely focused on getting her through it. The grief hit me later.
What helped me more than anything was going out into the garden and digging. I made sure to do it safely, since I know it can be risky, so I dug wide and with wooden supports, but there was something about just digging and digging down that let me work through all the darkness that had built up in my head. It gave those feelings somewhere to go.
This is unrelated, but I wonder if I did actually hit on something primal in myself.
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Best digging I ever did was in a torrential downpour for 4 hours. Mud and grass was flying everywhere, my shoes were squeaking as they drove down the shovel. I was soaked to the bone and my heavy, cotton clothes slapped freely against my skin with each shovel full I tossed to the side. That was some of my favorite digging ever.
Winston Churchill famously used to build brick walls to deal with the "black dog" of depression.
I think the “primal urge” to dig is just really seeking the endorphins of manual labor. Digging like that is especially attractive because there’s little planning (unless you’re making a tunnel like the subject here) and no material investment but the earth beneath your feet.
You found your chew toy.
Joking aside, I too have spent many days digging with a shovel and pickaxe on my desert property. There's something to it, even Jim Keller (of DEC, AMD, Tenstorrent...) has discussed digging trenches in some of his podcast interviews.
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I figure if Seymore Cray thought digging was useful for mental hygiene it's probably ok:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling