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By Root 621 0

run to do a show, but it was really great chatting with you!” In retrospect, this was foolish. Moffat was AWESOME. So many great stories and insights, but that narcissistic comedy gene pulled me away to go hop up on stage for fifteen minutes. Yes! The Monday night UCB show “Whiplash” is trainloads of fun, but I do stand-up ALL THE TIME. How often do I get to chat with one of my genius heroes? I’m not made of synthetic polymers, people! I Nerd out over people as much as the next Poindexter. I kicked myself for DAYS over this until I finally had to construct a bullshit “if-then” situation so my brain would let it go. It went something like this: “Well, IF I had stayed at that event any later, THEN it’s possible a meteor may have fallen and killed me on the way home.” OF COURSE THAT IS HIGHLY IMPROBABLE. But it’s not 100 percent impossible either, and that’s how my brain gets tricked. It’s a weird, secular outgrowth of my Italian Catholic mother’s “everything happens for a reason” thing. (Though don’t free will and determinism create a universal paradox? Oh, never mind.) She would always say, “Well, if you had done that other thing, you might have died in a car accident on the way home, so don’t feel bad.” I added the meteor because large unexplained meteors in urban settings are funny to me for some reason. As ridiculous as it is, it gives my mind just enough of a reason, no matter how stupid, to relinquish its grip on my shame sensors by trumping it with survival instinct. The lower parts of my brain don’t have enough logic to know that a space-rock falling out of the sky in New York City at 11:00 p.m. is not very likely. This is because my lower brain is an idiot, but that is its job.

No matter what tricks you use or what decisions you make, go easy on yourself as someone who’s on a never-ending quest for improvement. No one sets out to make a bad decision (unless they paid $100 to see Charlie Sheen’s Violent Torpedo of Truth tour. Right? Who’s with me? Remember when that was a timely reference? Aw, man . . . Spring of ’11!!! Good times. [chestbump] [woop woop] [crying]).

CHARACTERCIZE

Write three ridiculous “if-then” scenarios to strengthen decisions you’ve made.

ENGINEERING LUCK

Luck is an interesting concept. It gets a lot of credit, though some of it is not necessarily deserved. Luck usually gets assigned to other people when it’s good, and to ourselves when it’s bad. “That jackwad got a promotion??? What a lucky prick!” (Trying to bring “prick” back into style. I mean the word, not the thing.) Or, “I lost my job today. I guess I’m having a run of bad luck.” It’s rare that people assign the label of “lucky” to themselves, either because they’re superstitious when things are going well or they just don’t believe they are (no matter how good they have it).

In my experience, there are two kinds of luck: blind luck and circumstantial luck. Blind luck is rare. It is an out-of-the-blue bolt of lightning that has nothing to do with anything other than the alignment of the cosmos in that particular moment (I’m using that astrology metaphor in the figurative sense). Winning the lotto, having a business trip that you didn’t want to go on get canceled because of bad weather, answering your front door to find a talking emu who brings you fortune and fame—these are examples of blind luck. Through no action of your own, some really neato thing just happened at you. It’s not controllable and you can’t force it to happen. Circumstantial luck, however, is far more common and usually mistaken for blind luck mainly because humans by and large are lazy thinkers. Luck in this instance should really be written in quotations, “luck,” because it’s not an unmotivated happenstance. You have WAY more control over this kind. In fact, YOU MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK. The fortunate or unfortunate occurrences that befall you most of the time are the direct result of attitudes you employ and the choices you make. You set the table every day for what kind of “luck” you will receive most of the time. Architects don’t luck into a building. They