Even if a monk was a big reader, it seems like a job as a medieval monastic might have been a trade-off: These guys probably had a fairly decent standard of living (despite the chastity vow), and they certainly had a chance to read every scroll in the library. However, the work was mentally taxing, as indicated by these notes added to the margins of transcribed material. Probably better to be a royal blacksmith.

"Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach, and your sides."

"St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing."

"While I wrote I froze: and what I could not write by the beams of day I finished by candlelight."

"As the sick man desireth health even so doth the transcriber desire the end of his volume."

"Now I've written the whole thing; for Christ's sake give me a drink."

This colophonic compilation was featured in the best book I have read recently: Evolution of the Book, by Frederick Kilgour.