＃４６

She utterly adored the 80/20 principle, even evangelised it — to everyone who’d listen, and ten times as many who wouldn’t. Like a sea cucumber eviscerating its organs to ward off some perceived threat, so Camille violently discarded the very life she’d built. What began as an infection of her work calendar now spread to her marriage, hobbies, sex… her last vestige of self-indulgence became a daydream while she cooked.

After 6 months of this — Epiphany #2 arrived. She could apply the 80/20 principle to itself! In a flash, in a grand shattering of the blinkers ‘round her eyes, Camille saw that her productive habits were themselves disposed to the sin of suboptimality. Oh, how had she been so blind?!

She set about cleaning house. Where Netflix had yielded to a buffet of podcasts, she now selected only one. Her 30-minute stir-fry prep was still too long (!!), so she distilled it down to plain tofu/rice. Pilates gave way to pushups, and evening walks to runs…

… ah, the runs.

When all was said and done, when the 20% of the 20% of the 20% was at last distilled… Camille found running her panacea. It ticks *every* box, she insisted, to everyone who’d listen. Exercise! Environment! A universal sense of community! Even her neue-finance podcast gurus surrendered, finally, to her imagined mindfulness while running. (In truth, Camille merely thought she was not thinking.)

And so Camille steadily, obsessively purged every part of her life until nothing remained but to run. She ceased to eat or sleep, and soon ran in a twilight daze of egolessness. Her gaze fluttered and warped: she soon knew not where she ran, or even that she ran. It was not productive to know. It wasn’t 80/20.

So she ran, and ran, and ran, and ran until one day — in the cold spatter of a winter squall — she ran herself into thin air and vanished.