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Running Start

When I first read The Overcoat by Gogol as a kid, I am pretty sure these lines did not remind me of me

It would be hard to find a man who lived in his work as did Akaky Akakyevitch. To say that he was zealous in his work is not enough; no, he loved his work. In it, in that copying, he found a varied and agreeable world of his own. There was a look of enjoyment on his face; certain letters were favorites with him, and when he came to them he was delighted; he chuckled to himself and winked and moved his lips, so that it seemed as though every letter his pen was forming could be read in his face. If rewards had been given according to the measure of zeal in the service, he might to his amazement have even found himself a civil counsellor; but all he gained in the service, as the wits, his fellow clerks, expressed it, was a buckle in his buttonhole and a pain in his back. It cannot be said, however, that no notice had ever been taken of him.

While I can hardly claim I live for my work and have a zeal for it that is matched by few. But there is something to be said for getting into the zone with something relatively meaningless and remaining there for a long time. In my case that serves an escape hatch from having to think about useful things I could do with my life that I can't seem to work off the inertia to do. Like Akaky Akakyevitch I have found solace in persisting with things that come easy to me, don't require me to challenge myself a great deal and repeat doing those very things ad nauseum. 

Depending on what kind of start a person gets in life, such monotony can leave them in a good, bad or indifferent place. For the protagonist in Gogol's novel, things go from bad to dire and death. For those of us who were lucky to have started a bit further along, we could end up materially better off  than Akaky Akakyevitch but spiritually the same or worse.

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