honestly, i read it as the opposite, expressly because it's a diegetically performative act. the text is lampshading that your character, the multidisciplinarian who has bent magic-science and science-magic alike to their very whims, has for some reason decided that the best way for them to contribute to the city is to do perfectly ordinary work as if they were a perfectly ordinary person and not a chaotic kleptomanic bundle of ambition that bounces around the entire neath like a ping-pong ball. y'know, as opposed to doing work using their forbidden-magic-language powers, or their another-magic-science powers. who needs those when you have an entirely mundane shovel which you haven't even touched since you became a PoSI?