As I said in a different comment:

Honestly just kinda fell into it. Was working in a warehouse and hated it. Just walked off one day, called a friend just to complain about it and the firm he was working for happened to be hiring. I was 18, I'm now a few months away from 40.

For the bonus: I left and did other stuff here and there, few years of demolition, but always ended up back at a masonry firm. I'm good at it. It's heavy work, but there's a lot of thinking involved. Sometimes you spend 3 times as long thinking about how a stone is going to go in around various obstructions without damaging anything than it takes to actually fit the stone. It's mentally stimulating and physically taxing. I guess to take the long way to answering your question, I always wanted to do masonry as soon as I started it. I only left for something else due to shitty bosses.

Being able to guesstimate basic maths, measuring and then cutting exactly to that measurement, being able to semi-accurately gauge out a mix consistently. Most importantly, you need the willingness to do a hard shift, it can be brutal work sometimes. Everything else is icing.

A skill I worked really hard on was grinder dexterity. Being able to cut a straight line is actually a lot harder than one might think. And then polishing with a grinder, it's finicky, really easy to accidentally put a huge divot into a face.

Not really sure about a skill I'm jealous of. I'll have to come back to that.

I didn't know that, but now I'm telling everyone I came up with it!

Yep, I take as much interior work as I can get! Most of what I've done in my career is "residential". Though that's kind of a stretch as most of the homes I was working on were multi-milion/billion dollar properties. I now work in conservation, and do side jobs occasionally.

I'll have a look through all my old pictures tomorrow and see if I can rustle up a pic or two of interior work I've done.

Diamond wire saws are neat, if Google hadn't completely fucked search for everyone I could probably find an article I pulled out back on Reddit. If I recall correctly, there's evidence of twine and fine sand being used in the bronze age to cut dimensional stone. Squared blocks.

I don't trust CNC to cut stone. They're fine for simple stuff, but there's always extra work on CNCd stone to get it to fit properly. And I definitely wouldn't trust it to cut something like a Corinthian capital.

Human ingenuity is by far the coolest tool in any trades person's bucket. As you encounter new problems, you Jerry rig a new tool. Need to cut the inside of a hole basically 90° from the face? Get a piece of steel, bend it and sharpen it. BAM! New cool tool specifically made to do a job!

Silicosis is one of the biggest hazards. It happens when ultra-fine particles of silica dust get breathed in and cause scarring on the lungs. It's spooky shit.

Other than that there's the usual dangers of working with large heavy materials and power tools. There's a high risk of Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome and arthritis from swinging a hammer at a chisel for hours on end.

Honestly just kinda fell into it. Was working in a warehouse and hated it. Just walked off one day, called a friend just to complain about it and the firm he was working for happened to be hiring. I was 18, I'm now a few months away from 40.

Fuck yeah I have! Am I any good at it? Not so much.....

Thanks! This has been really fun!

Life's interesting enough without having to revolve around drama, too many people watching too much daytime TV....smfh

I do have a mason's mark, I haven't registered it though.

I'd actually love to see it! It's quite a pain in the process, but the satisfaction of the job done is beyond compare.
Happy to give some pointers.

On AskMeAnything.

Hmmm....I think it'd be nice if there was something after, not convinced there is. I'm perfectly happy with returning my substance back to the earth. I asked my wife to arrange a sky burial....turns out that's not exactly legal here in the UK....