I don't know if this counts as a confession really or if it's just a 2am thought because the blue light from my phone is starting to make my eyes ache. Does anyone else ever look at their life and it just feels... beige? Like, I've done everything right. I have the PhD. I have the tenure track position. I’m sitting here at my desk with sixty-two introductory biology papers about cellular respiration and I just... I don't feel anything. I think maybe I’m supposed to be proud of these kids for trying, but I’m just staring at the red ink on my fingers and wishing it was grease or wood stain instead. My dad was a carpenter back in our little town. Nothing fancy, just rough-cut stuff mostly, barns and porch railings and the odd kitchen remodel. He had these hands—you know the kind—where the dirt and the oil is just part of the skin. Permanent. I remember him coming home smelling like cedar and sweat and maybe a little bit of cheap beer. He’d sit at the kitchen table and lay out his tools like they were holy objects. I remember the way he'd run a thumb over a joint he just finished, and his face would just... change. It wasn't happiness, exactly. It was more like he finally existed in the room. Like he was SOLID. Here I am, forty-five years old, and I’m reading a paper by a kid named Tyler who thinks "mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" is a profound original thought. I have to write "Check your syntax" in the margin. Syntax. What a weird, thin word. My dad never had to worry about syntax. He just worried about whether the grain was going to split or if the level was true. There’s something so honest about a level. The little bubble doesn't lie. It doesn't care about your credentials or how many papers you've published in a journal. It’s just... it’s just true. I think I might be a fraud. I mean, I know the material. I can explain the Krebs cycle until I’m blue in the face. But when I’m standing in front of the lecture hall, I feel like I’m wearing a costume. Like I’m a kid playing dress-up in a tweed jacket. I find myself looking at the wooden lectern, wondering what kind of wood it is. Oak? Or maybe just a cheap veneer over particle board. I’ll be mid-sentence about phenotype expression and I’m secretly wondering if the person who built the desk used a dovetail joint or just some wood glue and a prayer. My hands are so soft. It’s embarrassing. I have "academic hands." No calluses, no scars from a slipped chisel, just a little bit of a cramp from holding a pen too tight. Sometimes I go to the hardware store on the weekends just to walk down the lumber aisle. I don't buy anything. I just stand there and breathe in the pine. It’s pathetic, right? A grown man huffing sawdust in a big box store because he’s too scared to admit he hates his office. I think maybe people would laugh if they knew. Or they’d say I’m ungrateful because I have tenure and a pension. Maybe I am. I tried to explain this to my wife once. She just looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. She said, "But you worked so hard for this, you love science." And I guess I do? Or I did? I don't know. Maybe I just liked the idea of being the guy who knew things. But knowing things is so heavy. Building things... that feels light. Even if the wood is heavy, the result is something you can touch. You can sit on a chair. You can't sit on a lecture about genetic drift. It just floats away the second the bell rings. It doesn't STAY. I had this dream the other night. I was back in my dad’s old shop. The light was coming through the dusty windows in these long, thick rays. I was working on a cabinet. Just a simple cabinet. And the smell was so real I could taste it on the back of my tongue. I woke up and the room was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and I felt this... I don't know, this hollow space in my chest. It didn't even hurt. It was just EMPTY. Like a room with no furniture in it. Is it too late to just... stop? I have a mortgage. I have car payments. My parents tell everyone in town their son is a Professor like I’m some kind of local hero. I can’t exactly go out and start an apprenticeship at my age. The guys would look at me like I’m some kind of tourist. "Oh, look at the professor trying to use a circular saw." I can hear it already. So I just stay here. I mark another C- minus on a paper about protein synthesis. I use a little more red ink. I try to pretend that this matters as much as a well-fitted door frame. Am I the only one who feels like they’re living someone else’s life? Like there was a fork in the road twenty years ago and I took the "smart" path but I left my actual soul back at the trailhead? I keep thinking about my dad’s hands. He’s been gone five years now and I still have his old block plane in a box in the garage. I haven't even touched it. I’m afraid if I pick it up, I’ll realize I don't even know how to hold it properly. And that would be the end of it, wouldn't it? The proof that I’m neither a good carpenter nor a particularly good biologist. I think I’m just going to finish this stack of papers. It’s 2:15 now. If I finish by 3:00, I can get a few hours of sleep before my 8am lab. I’ll stand there and talk about osmosis and I’ll try not to look at my hands. I’ll try to forget about the smell of cedar. I don't know why I’m even writing this. Maybe I just wanted to see if anyone else is sitting in the dark right now, wondering why they spent their whole life building a house they don't even want to live in. Is it just me?