Why am I only valued for what I cut, never what I build?

You have a real skill. You can walk into any budget and find the fat. That is rare, and it is useful. But somewhere along the way, you let that one skill become the whole of your worth, and now it feels like a cage instead of a craft. Here is the uncomfortable part: no one assigned you this narrow measure. You accepted it, meeting after meeting, cut after cut, because it was easy to be praised for it. That is where your power still lives — not in the company's scorecard, but in what you choose to do with your hands next. The weariness you feel is not about spreadsheets. It is about being known only as a knife. A man who only cuts, and never builds, starts to distrust his own usefulness. That distrust is the real problem. Fix that, and the job title stops mattering so much.