Old guy ramble follows, kinda answering the question, mostly to spread my warped form of wisdom
I've been self-employed for nearing 3 decades. Programming mostly, but I've had phases were I had to get out of the chair and pound nails or sell boots (2 of the last 4 years in this stretch) simply for a change of pace and muscle mass and my perception that most high tech workers, well, don't.
If you go into any cubicle space and walk the halls, you will almost 100% of the time find someone NOT working. They'll be on the phone discussing a motorcycle purchase, or an upcoming vacation or playing mine sweeper. Now, programmers and other "thinking careers" do need mental breaks, breaks that can't be willed to occur between noon and one. Unfortunately there is no "go move some boxes" fallback for our career that can kick in for an hour or two on a daily basis so that those breaks are productive. So employees sneak the time. Not good, and there are very few honest and productive ways around it due to our culture.
One of the lessons that should be learned at a very young age, but I feel is not instilled in many North Americans; once you trade your time for someone else's money, it is not your time anymore. Unless you buy it back; your freedom of choice is gone, it is part of the contract of pay for time. Those that have worked a minimum wage job will now this; employers enforce it. For reasons that escape me, those that are at 10 times minimum wage seem to forget this obligation from time to time. Employers expect a higher level of professionalism and work ethic and do not feel they should be required to enforce it. Sadly as mentioned above, few programmers are given any honest and productive way of dealing with the times when mental breaks are required so it takes a very high level of discipline to not breach the obligation of trading time for money. And at high rates of pay, this is even more critical, in my humble opinion.
Currently I'm a teleworker, programming in REBOL mainly, but C is prominent as well. Being a teleworker I end up on the keys between 12 and 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Split with personal life, making coffee, chatting on compsci, and other non-clock activities, of the 90ish hours a week, 30 to 40 is clocked, 30 is open-source contributions (OpenCOBOL currently, which is way cool as I'm linking many different programming languages to the COBOL core) and the rest is shluff time. When required, more goes clocked, but I'm fortunate to trade my time for their money on a very flexible basis.
My last stint in the construction trade; we'd be in the truck at 7am and come home at 8pm or so. All that time except for about an hour was working, and the hour off was discussing the next job. My boss had 6 kids, so he needed and wanted to be go-go-go, he was very good at it and I simply struggled to keep up and not get in the way.
As I learned quickly, hanging drywall can be very very hard (envision someone pressing upwards on ceiling board full strength), or with some tricks, quite easy (when the boss asks "what are doing? you aren't holding up the ceiling, you only need to use enough muscle to hold up a sheet of drywall").
Most of my career was in a cubicle programming polyFORTH on OpenVMS/Vax; theoretically 9 to 5, but once the application we were building entered the production phase, we had to do many of the tasks when the other 9 to 5'ers (as a group that expression covers 6:30am till about 9pm) did not need the system. Many of our development activities started at 10pm and would carry through till 4am or later, with the system back in full production mode by 6 am as expected. When management had scheduled 9am meetings with other teams, those ended up being long day-nights.
I'd have to opine that the only job I didn't enjoy completely was my first few summers in my first job; commercial fisherman, the family business. I didn't understand the "my time for their money" obligation for the first few seasons and instead of embracing it, I rebelled against it. Bad frame of mind that does nothing but create a bad inner vibe. Embracing the obligation changed everything, be happy when charging for your time; it's a cool system and it will prepare you for the highest highs and lowest lows.
Stress should almost always be part of work, good or bad. It's an aspect of human nature to strive.
Pay in the high tech field is almost always above average and those in the field should feel blessed at the remuneration. Pay in low tech jobs can also "feel" good when entered with the right frame of mind.
I'll also offer a word of advice. When looking for work, Help Desk phone support may be one of the worst career choices if not well prepared. All stress, with disgruntled people and strict enforcement of time for money. It will require a high level of mental discipline to be good and still enjoy this type of employment. It can be done, but requires effort and continual calm collected inner mental reasoning. Customers will rarely call back to thank first level support techs, and if they do take the time to try, they usually end up on different phone line from the pool. Not to say walk away from a support role offer, just enter with eyes open and be prepared.
Cheers