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‘Well, my dad used to like to mow the lawn in little patches and strips. He’d do the east corner of the front yard, come in the house for a while, then do the southwest strip of the back lawn and a little square at the south fence, come back in, and like that. He had a lot of rituals like that, it’s how he was. You know? It took a while to realise he did this with the lawn because he liked the feeling of being done. Of having a job and feeling like he did it and it was done. It’s a solid little feeling, it’s like you’re a machine that knows it’s running well and doing what it was made to do. You know? By dividing the lawn into like seventeen small little sections, which our mom thought was nuts as usual, he could feel the feeling of finishing a job seventeen times instead of just once. Like, “I’m done. I’m done again. Again, hey look, I’m done.”

‘Well some of the same thing is at work here. In Rotes. I like it. An average 1040 takes around twenty-two minutes to go through and examine and fill out the memo on. Maybe a little longer depending on your criteria. You know. But never more than half an hour. Each completed one gives you that solid little feeling.

‘The thing here is that the returns never stop. There’s always a next one to do. You never really finish. But on the other hand it was the same with the lawn, you know? At least when it rained enough. By the time he got around to the last little section he’d marked off, the first patch would be ready to mow again. He liked a short, groomed-looking lawn. He spent a lot of time out there, come to think of it. A lot of his time.’