I’m looking out at the garden now, well, what passes for one. More of a small patch, really. A lot of hostas. Reliable. Predictable. Like everything else for… decades. I wonder if I ever told anyone, really. About that other thing. Not in so many words. Not in a way that truly EXPLAINED the chasm. The sheer… misalignment. I remember distinctly, age 12. Drawing schematics. Not for houses, not for cars. For *spaces*. For how plants would curve and flow, how paths would invite, how light would break through specific foliage at specific times of day. Even then, the geometric precision was there, yes – but applied to organic forms. It was a kind of… spatial empathy. A deep understanding of how green things could shape human experience. I remember my father, God rest him, seeing one of my elaborate designs for the backyard. He just chuckled. “Looks like a tax form, son, all those little boxes.” Even then, that STING. The immediate pigeonholing. The redirection. So, the spreadsheets came. The audits. The corporate structures. The quarterly reports. The sheer volume of numbers, the relentless pursuit of… *balance*. I became quite good at it. VERY good. A certain kind of success, measured in net worth and professional reputation. The kind that provides a decent view of a hosta-filled garden. But it was always a displacement activity, wasn't it? A highly remunerated diversion. Like building a magnificent dam when your soul craves a raging river. The energy is there, the skill is present, but the *purpose* is fundamentally inverted. I still pick up freelance gigs, you know. Small consults. Tax season is always a scramble. No benefits, obviously. Just the hustle. It’s a completely different rhythm than the old corporate days. Sometimes, I’ll find myself sketching in the margins of a spreadsheet, not financial projections, but little vignettes of a garden. A dry riverbed feature. A Japanese maple, perfectly placed. A weeping cherry. And I think, this is where the precision should have gone. This is where the meticulous planning, the strategic thinking, the deep understanding of *systems* belonged. It’s not regret, not exactly. More like a pervasive, low-level cognitive dissonance that’s been humming beneath the surface for 60 years. A faint but persistent signal that says, “Incorrect input. System error.” Sometimes, when I’m out walking, I’ll see a particularly well-designed public park, or even just a thoughtfully planted storefront, and I feel a pang. Not of envy, but of… identification. A recognition of a language I was meant to speak, a syntax I was born to construct. And now it’s just… quiet. Mostly. The hostas are doing well this year, though. They always do.