A reader messaged me on Instagram this week to say they cried when they got to Karo's death in The Monkey State.

This caught me off guard.

When you're writing a novel, you're so focused on making the story work.

You're thinking about scenes, dialogue, pacing and all the moving parts.

It's easy to forget that readers aren't consuming it like that.

They meet characters. Spend time with them. Start to care about them, maybe.

It's an odd feeling when someone has such an emotional reaction to a character who only existed in your head.

Last weekend I was in Oxford catching up with a good friend from my first days in the world of work after university. We both started as paralegals at the US law firm Ropes & Gray.

As often happens when old friends get together, we spent some time reminiscing.

That job. The colleagues. The things we thought mattered...

It got me thinking about Karo.

His death was always part of the plan.

Although saying that, I did debate with my editor whether it was too strong for the tone of the book.

Anyway, the idea came from the Japanese term karoshi, which literally means "death from overwork".

It's an extreme concept, but it stuck with me.

Not because I thought everyone in a cubicle was in danger of working themselves to death, but because it captures something many people recognise.

The expectation that (real) life will begin later.

Post qualification.

After things calm down.

Post promotion.

After one more year.

One more quarter.

One more month.

In my twenties I did a startup course and spent three years working at Escape the City.

One of the taglines from their manifesto was simple:

"Life is too short to do work that doesn't matter to you."

I loved that idea and I do think I was careering (pun intended) towards depression in the corporate world.

But while I was driving back from Oxford, the question did nibble at me:

"What if I had stuck it out?"

Cue retrospective daydreaming.

[Private, thank you!]

I still believe life is too short to be in a job you hate...

And yet my views are a bit more nuanced than they were back then.

I think you can enjoy any job. Any line of work. If you want to.

[Happy to discuss & debate this.]

What Karo's sad demise was really meant to point to was that we're often chasing some future version of life where things finally fall into place. In his case, the Retirement Village.

In that path you forget to appreciate the here and now.

Or as the cliche goes, 'enjoy the journey'.

The danger is assuming that life is waiting for us on the other side of whatever we're doing now.

Why not have some fun with that now?

Until next time,
J. R. Roberts
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P.S. As always, this stuff is far easier to preach than practice, so if you have any thoughts do let me and Claude know.