Eighteen years into infrastructure, the job I'm actually good at turns out to be the one I thought was the warm-up.
Early on, I assumed the value was in knowing the hardest technical thing. So I chased depth.
Depth turned out to be common. The rare skill is taking something complicated and making it clear enough for someone outside it to make a good decision, without making it wrong.
For years I treated explaining as the soft bit after the real work. It was the real work.
Eighteen years to work out that the warm-up was the event.