Don't let your strengths rob your life of fun.

When he couldn’t bear working in an office any longer, my father quit and founded a tree surgery business. He’d worked for decades in local government as a project manager and was good at the work: he’s organised and detail oriented. But each morning he’d climb the ladder to his office and slump in his chair to start work. All the while he carried a ghost of the life he could have lived. Originally he applied for forestry courses post secondary school, but none of the colleges would take him. So when he was offered early retirement he took a punt on his dreams and retrained.

He took on a few clients here and there, and slowly built his list. Anything he earned he reinvested in the business, gaining new qualifications with chainsaws and in tree surgery. Because he was sober and organised, the business boomed. So much so that he could take on a couple of other lads to help him.

Towards the end of my PhD I visited home, and we chatted over dinner. He had taken on a job in the village: a large Italian Pine that was blocking the view from the house next to my old school and Dad had been hired to fell it. The tree had been growing for almost fifty years, and was taller than the house. But it was dying and in a recent storm some branches had fallen into the road, and broken a neighbour’s window. The tree was a danger. Dad needed all the help he could get.

One guy came from the other side of Wales, he would go up the tree to cut the top branches off. Another owned the rig to climb the trees. Yet another would cut the wood down to size before he and Dad loaded it up into a van. Not all the guys could be there at the same time, or even on the same days, and sometimes not all the gear could be there. So Dad had to manage everybody’s schedule, find accommodation for the traveller, and keep on top of the payments.

Another way of saying it is that Dad was project managing.

Dad felt pretty upset about the turn to project management in his business. He’d aimed at freedom and got what he wanted, but he didn’t reckon with his flaws. You bring all your flaws to everything you do. You bring all your strengths too, but you don’t appreciate those.

Dad started to take on smaller jobs. Ones he could do himself, ones that were less physically taxing, and didn’t involve climbing. He’s winding his business down now, preparing to retire once his liability insurance runs out

There’s a lot of life that’s like that sometimes: you have bills to pay, and finances to manage. Your parents are ageing, they’re going to die. But you have to sit down with your spouse and discuss where you’re going to go on holiday. Together you look at destinations, and compare travel costs, and try to find a great little hotel. And the worst part of it is that instead of escaping adventure, you tame experience and optimise most holiday for least cost.

A lot of life is boring, and simultaneously it’s existentially draining.

And it’s pretty inescapable: there’s a lot of admin to life. In fact, just now I put a load of washing in the machine. I also spent my lunch hour researching investment options, and organising an ebook refund for something I bought at 9am and immediately regretted. I also have student loans to pay off, and bills to pay. These things are simultaneously the most boring things in the world, and also laden with a kind of existential angst. If I choose the wrong ETF, or manage my risk incorrectly, I could fuck up my retirement. When you choose an internet supplier, or an electricity company there’s always the possibility you chose wrong, and that you’re going to pay for it somehow.

The spirit of choices you could have made is bad enough with choices that you actively make; at least you can come to terms with your own mistakes. But you’re haunted by ghosts when choices are forced onto you.

We’re rewarded for our strengths in life: whatever you find easy that other people just can’t get right. But these strengths can feel like they’re arbitrarily grafted onto our personalities. You may be detail oriented, but dream of the open sea. The only way you are ‘allowed’ to explore the desire is by taming it, reducing it to a hobby. How do you break out? Unfortunately you have to lean into your faults, at the expense of your competence.