"So the trick is to hold a balance between the boredom of not ghosting[1] at all and the exhaustion of doing too much of it. That's the trick in every aspect of life. You commit this excess and then you commit that excess and everything averages out in the middle, if you're lucky. If you survive long enough you can say that you've led a nice moderate life. The theory of countervailing excesses. In the long run all forces come into balance and all extremes cancel out. This is known as the process of regression to the mean. It makes for a very happy life, in the long run. Of course, in the short run you can go out of your fucking mind." -- Yakoub, narrator and protagonist of Star of Gypsies by Robert Silverberg (1986, Agberg Ltd.)
[1] Out-of-body travel to other times and places. The character has this ability, and at this point in the tale he's stuck in a dungeon and bored.