A PhD is a desert wasteland

So much of my work is solitary. I like talking to other people about stuff I've read (that'd be why I belong to a couple of book clubs), but there's only so much talking that you can do as a student of literature. Conferences are cool in that they're a chance not only to talk about things you've been working on, but also hear what other people are doing.
Much more of your time is spent reading...all alone. Before you can talk about a book, you have to have read it, right? And sometimes after you've read it, you need to write about it...another solitary activity.
The worst part? All that sedentariness tends to make your ass grow on top of everything. I actually have found I need to get out and go to the gym - my legs will start twitching and aching when I don't. I suppose that's a good thing (the exercise, that is).
But it's a lot of hard work done without the benefit of coworkers or companions like you might have in any other line of work.
So when I see an article like this, that describes how one senior employee in the government managed to get a six figure position by earning a PhD that took five hours and a 2,000 (yes, two thousand) word dissertation to complete, it gets really depressing.
[To put it in context, that dissertation is eight times longer than this post] Hmmmm, I seem to be doing a whole lot more than that for mine!