There's things I want to write about. I keep not writing about certain of these things. I think maybe I'm jumping the gun, I think maybe circumstances will change so what I wanted to talk about becomes moot, I think there's a chance that the simple act of writing about [xyz] will cause [xyz] not to happen. Or to happen then un-happen, like the end of Caitlín R. Kiernan's novel Threshold or the climax of Donnie Darko.

Sometimes I'm superstitious. Damnit.

And I shouldn't be. I have no rational reason to be. But I let this affect my thinking and my actions. Bussing to work? The side of the bus I sat on could determine my day. Entering a job through one of several gates? I'd have a better day if I went through this gate instead of that one. Complain online that I can't yet get a digital copy of a short novel because someone ahead of me has held onto it for weeks, when it's a book that could be read in a day, and maybe, maaaaaaaybe that person'll magically know it's time to finish it and pass it along so the next reader can read it.

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

But at some level I think it does. Then I realize that I think it does then I think Damnit, Chris and try not to think like that.

Magical thinking is a hell of a drug.

And this isn't even fun magical thinking. "Maybe The X-Men's Kitty Pryde will turn out to be real and available to date!" "Maybe I'll get to levitate and fly!" No, it's "things will suck unless I do [x]." And [x] is arbitrary. It can't possibly have an effect on, well, cause and effect. "Anything that happens, happens," to quote Douglas Adams (his 1992 novel Mostly Harmless), and there's no room for superstition in that statement. Qué será, será.

This is me trying to at least notice better when I think or act superstitiously. That way I'm more likely to stop doing it.