You couldn’t replace him with another birdwatcher. The tour wouldn’t be the same. His specific combination of knowledge, enthusiasm, and humanity made him irreplaceable.

I spent a year as a creative director doing exactly this. Good salary. Decent title. Work that needed doing. But nothing that required me specifically. Nothing that used the particular way I see the world

Every day you show up to be replaceable is a day the world misses out on what only you could build.

The salary is compensation for wasting your existence.

We’re components. Interchangeable parts in a machine that doesn’t need us specifically, just someone with the right qualifications.

You’re a set of DNA that’s never existed before in human history and will never exist again