Competence as a Cage

I don't know if I've ever met anyone who genuinely loved what they did for a living . And was also good at it.

It's usually the opposite.

The people who love their jobs almost always turned out to be mediocre at them. And the ones who can't stand what they do — quietly — tend to be the ones who are exceptional. Not universally. But consistently enough.

And when someone excellent at something claims to enjoy it, it always sounds the same. A pause and hedge.

"I mean…it's not too bad. I do enjoy it…sort of."

Never clean. Never certain.

There's that saying — "do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life."

I think what it actually means is: do what you love, and you'll accept your shortcomings more easily. The passion for the work becomes a painkiller. You tolerate your mediocrity because the joy compensates for a subpar performance.

On the other side — when someone is genuinely excellent at something — the excellence becomes the coping mechanism. The money, the respect, the reliability of being the person who gets it done. Those things get rehearsed until they sound like reason.

So on both fronts it's a negotiation taking place.

The negotiation works because we naturally attach meaning to what we spend time on. Whether or not the meaning is there. Because the alternative might be sitting with the fact that large portions of our lives go towards something that doesn't really matter to us. So our minds build a story. We find the tolerable parts and promote them. Find the good parts — the money, the status, the identity — and reframe them as reasons.

It's just how people get through the day.

However, the problem is when the story calcifies. When the negotiation becomes a fixed belief. Beliefs become facts and facts are hard to dispute.

A cage is a cage no matter how you redecorate it.

I work in an industry where the hours are long and the location is often isolated. But the money is good and the rosters mean you work half the year for the most part.

Every single person I've ever met who claims to love it are the ones who are shit at it. The ones who struggle the most with the long hours and isolation. They love the identity of it. The story it lets them tell. The money, the roster. But the environment itself? It eats them quietly and they're too attached to the narrative to notice.

The ones who openly can't stand it tend to fit right in. They go in without the illusion. They know exactly what they're trading and they've decided the trade is fair.

The difference is clarity. Clear eyed clarity is always the advantage.

But now the risk is forgetting the clarity part.

Because competence can begin to function as an anaesthetic. The better you get at something the quieter the other parts of you become. Not gone. Just numbed. Your ambitions for something new — something different — are slowly muffled by the noise of performing well. A quiet discontent is much easier to live with than a loud one.

So you stay.

Now the negotiation becomes a belief…which becomes fact…which becomes a problem.

Because all of a sudden leaving or changing isn't just a personal decision. It feels like a structural one. A simple choice feels like moral failure. Like you're dismantling something people were depending on.

It's one of the least discussed reasons people don't move.

There's also the sunk cost that nobody names out loud: Identity.

The longer you've been doing something the more walking away from it feels like you're admitting the whole period was a mistake. Like changing direction invalidates years of your life. Yet deep down we know this isn't true — the voice on the surface is always the loudest.

Maybe the real issue isn't the pivot but the fear of being ordinary at something new.

Competence gives you daily proof. Tangible evidence that you are capable and valued. Walk away and none of that proof exists in the new place. You're starting again. You might be average for a long time before you're not. And for a lot of people that prospect is more terrifying than staying somewhere that doesn't fit.

A cage you built brick by brick out of reasonable decisions that made sense at the time.

Anyway, here's where I've landed….for now.

Maybe the real negotiation isn't finding the thing you love and are great at simultaneously. Maybe the actual move is simpler and more brutal than any of the advice suggests.

Keep doing what you're good at to fund what you love. Stay clear on which is which.

Not as a permanent arrangement but as a deliberate one.

Treat it as a transaction you made with yourself. Clear eyed clarity. Terms agreed. Expiry date TBD.

Keep excelling at doing what you hate so you can fund the move to sucking at doing what you love one day.

You won't suck at it forever.

The ones who are good at what they love didn't start off that way.

They just survived long enough to stop being bad at it.

The cage?

Now it's a bank.