Why did I take this chair if all I do is manage budgets?

You asked for this chair, or you let others talk you into it, or you saw no one else willing to do it. Whichever it was, you said yes. Now you spend your days on budgets and faculty disputes instead of the work you trained for. This is not a trick played on you. It is the job you accepted. Your department needs someone making these calls — fairly, clearly, without hiding from the hard conversations. That is not a lesser task than research. It is a different task, and right now it is yours. Comparing it to the life you imagined only wastes the hours you actually have. You are not carrying this alone. A department runs on people — faculty, staff, colleagues who have a stake in how it goes. Stop treating the politics as an obstacle between you and your real work. Handled honestly, the politics is the work that lets everyone else do theirs.