This week I’m thinking about attention and coincidence. There’s a phenomenon called the blue car effect that describes how you might start noticing blue cars on the road if you’re thinking of buying a blue car yourself. I’ve noticed this whenever I have to make a new car purchase, noticing not only colors but also brands I’m deciding between. I guess this means I’m no different from anyone else when it comes to how my subconscious brain decides to filter the world and present it to my conscious self, and the feedback from the conscious self adjusting that subconscious filter, and how that cycle affects my everyday.

There’s a whole self-help book industry built on this idea. I’m sure you’ve come across it yourself of met someone who has. What I’m thinking about this week is similar to that, but with a twist.

What made me notice the noticing was a bit of dialogue from All Creatures Great and Small on PBS this week. Siegfried was opining to James about how despite all our preparations and ordering of our life, the world throws unexpected spears and arrows that knock us off our expected path. Now there’s nothing profound about the lines, which are boilerplate at best, if not cliched. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before, but it hit me just when I was wrestling with an unexpected revelation earlier in the week.

We’re trying to navigate college admissions with our son, who despite a stellar academic resume geared specifically for STEM and computer science (CS), can’t seem to find a university program willing to accept him into a CS program. I’m not saying this to bellyache about it but only to say that despite following all the advice (AP classes, extracurriculars, volunteering,  SAT scores, grades, interviews, applying early, and applying to a variety of colleges), it seems a confluence of events has him waitlisted, rejected, and shunted to non-CS programs from the schools he’s applied to.

It made me wonder if I made a mistake somewhere, offered the wrong advice, or just didn’t do my due diligence.  I’m a planner by nature, and I felt I failed my son by not planning properly. My attention went to the choices I could have made for him that might have shaded the probabilities more favorably, even though I knew there was nothing I could do about it now.

However, wallowing in self-doubt and recriminations is rather egotistical. The world is not about me, and is under no obligation to make sense. Knowing it is one thing, getting the guilt and confusion to wash out of the back of my mind is something else. I’d banish the thoughts for a while, only to have them come back while fixing dinner or folding laundry. Now my problem was how to stop ruminating on things I couldn’t control.

Siegfried’s line in my favorite light drama hit me and it resonated down to my bones. On any other Sunday it would have been forgotten in a few minutes, but here I am writing a whole newsletter about it, just because my mind was wrestling with a problem and seemingly by coincidence, found a helpful answer. I don’t know who wrote that line, but I’d like to shake their hand. Then, I’d like to shake the hand of the programming director that put the episode on this particular Sunday night, and not some other.

Or I can give my subconscious an “atta boy!” for setting the rest of me straight.  Now it can go back to generating story ideas and dialogue snippets.

Has something like this happened to you? I’d love to hear your stories about coincidence and chance.  Let me know in the comments!

PS: My son, of course, didn’t need his dad’s anxiety. He still has a few schools he hasn’t hear from yet and he just started a second round of applications and is sending them out this week. He’ll be fine. 🙂

Reader Goodies

Here’s a classic from my reading library worth checking out, especially if you’re a Babylon 5 fan and if you can find it.

The Legions of Fire trilogy (The Long Night of Centauri Prime, Armies of Light and Dark, and Out of the Darkness) by Peter David details the events hinted at during flash-forwards in the show’s final season. If you’re a fan of Londo Molari and Vir Cotto, which I am, you’ll love this long descent into the dark days of Londo as Emperor and the rise of Vir taking his place. The author in me loves how Vir’s character evolves and someday I might use it as inspiration for taking a minor character from my own stories and giving their own hero’s journey.

I have the omnibus edition in my library, which seems to be out of print and commanding a stupid high price. The individual novels are still available and more affordable.

Uplift Update

This week, Tier 2 subscribers unlock chapter 5 in Uplift, while Tier 3 will get more cyberspace fun reading chapter 8.