Playing with Schrödinger’s cat

There’s a strange pattern in my life: whenever I say something with absolute confidence, I end up being wrong. Not just once or twice — consistently enough that my wife has noticed too. It’s become a running joke between us. I’ll declare something as fact, and the universe seems to grin and say, Oh, really? Let’s test that. It would be funny if it didn’t sting so much. After a while, it starts to feel like confidence itself is cursed.

That feeling has crept into my writing life. July was my best-selling month ever — nearly double my average. Then August came, and it was almost double July. By any measure, those numbers are the kind of milestone you dream about. If that was to keep happening, by the end of the year I could afford a decent meal at a restaurant 😉 But here’s the embarrassing part: I couldn’t bring myself to tell my wife. Not because she wouldn’t celebrate with me (she would), but because I was terrified that saying it out loud would jinx it. The moment I admit, even to myself, I’m doing well, sales seem to vanish. The graph flattens, the momentum stalls, and I’m left with the irrational thought that my confidence killed it.

What makes this worse is that the logic doesn’t add up. My best-selling product right now is my Absolution of the Morning Star box set — the one I haven’t really promoted. I’ve also been fighting a three-month battle because the series isn’t ranking and therefore has no keyword visibility. It shows up on page 10 for “Dark Fantasy Epic”, but as there are 156 other great books before it, I doubt that is driving its sales. Meanwhile, my new projects, the ones I’ve pushed, have seemed to disappear into the void. I don’t know what I’m doing right, which makes it even harder to trust myself when things go well. It feels like Schrödinger’s cat: as long as I keep the box closed, success is alive, but the moment I name it, I collapse the wave and it dies.

And here’s where my background in psychology doesn’t save me. I know the terms: cognitive bias, pattern-seeking, negativity bias. I am well-versed in statistics. I know sales data is volatile, that spikes regress to the mean, and that my brain is just highlighting the coincidences that fit the story. But knowledge doesn’t erase emotion, and in my case it collides with something deeper.

I was raised in a culture where humility wasn’t optional. Don’t boast. Don’t tempt fate. Don’t get too proud, because pride invites downfall. Good fortune, if it came, was something you carried quietly. That script is still in me, as hard as I resist being typecast. Even now, pride feels dangerous. Celebration feels like an invitation for punishment. Lucifer is a key character in my Lucadian world, so I’ve done the research on the devestation of pride.

So wins that should bring joy get hidden away. Achievements become secrets. And I have to write essays to justify to myself that it is ok to be proud sometimes. If we don’t celebrate the successes, then what’s the point?

I’m beginning to see that confidence has never really been about being right. It’s something sturdier, something quieter: resilience. It’s the willingness to keep showing up even when the graph dips, to celebrate the work even if tomorrow it feels invisible. It’s the strength to speak the truth of a good month without fear that saying it out loud will undo it.

So here’s me lifting the lid on the box. July inched into a milestone and August smashed it. I don’t know why it happened, and I don’t know if I’ll ever replicate it again. But I’m saying it anyway. If the numbers collapse tomorrow, so be it. Confidence isn’t a jinx; maybe it’s the only thing that lets me laugh at setbacks, survive the dips, and keep going.

Cheers!

---