You had wanted to be a forester for a long time. On childhood walks in the forest with your parents, the stacked piles of cut logs fascinated you: clearly the result of human skill, but somehow also still a part of the forest. Each log different. Each pile unique.
As an adult you found work and, each morning, you headed out into the wide, enveloping forest with your axe. Years passed, and you cultivated your skills as a forester.
Then they came to you and told you that the world had changed, and that you had to use a chainsaw. They said that chainsaws were the future. So you learned to wield one: the difference between cutting and chopping; how to hold your body; necessary maintenance; the angle and stroke of the file to sharpen the chain. Years passed. The labour, like the forest, seemed endless, and you continued to develop your skills.
Then they came to you again and told you that the world had changed, and that you had to sit in a room in a building in an office park in the city and supervise a fleet of robotic tree-harvesting agents. The machines never stopped, they said, and were better at chopping-down trees than people were, and more productive. They said that this was the future.
So you learned how to use the remote controls, the telepresence headset, and the communication systems. Each day you devised a harvesting plan for your team, even though the machines were almost completely autonomous. And the air in that room was grey and stale.
And that was when you realised that, for you, it was never about chopping down trees, or the height of the log-pile. It was always about being in the forest.