Did I waste years measuring everything?

You say "the real skill is in the finished work," but the skill to finish it well often comes from that physical start.

Wait, hold up. I gotta be honest, switching the pads themselves never felt like the real win to me. All that stuff still comes wrapped in plastic or boxed up in more packaging. Feels like we're just moving the trash around instead of making less of it.

I just made a laminated cheat sheet for common layers, taped it to every monitor.

My smart light bulbs needed three different apps just to get them working. I had to get one for the bulbs, another for the hub, and a third for updates. It's like what @nancy532 said, where every gadget wants its own app now. My phone screen is a mess of icons for things I rarely touch. I'm almost out of space from all these single use apps.