I sometimes wonder, if my co-worker had told any of us what he was planning to do, would we have responded with any more than a perfunctory, “that sounds nice, Paul.” Maybe. Or if he’d bothered to ask for permission from Management, first, would they have told him “no”? Possibly.

Paul lives alone on a large property in upstate New York, where he maintains a large and beautiful garden. Four nights a week, he comes into the city for his graveyard shifts in the word processing center of a large law firm where I do the same work by day.