alain de botton is the man.......becoming quite a fan....his book on proust i dug.....then read an interview....seemed ok.......lot of haters but he seems ok

anyway....read this...........it's quite remarkable how much it matched my outlook on life

''I suffer from a basic superstition that you're allowed only so much good fortune before something very bad will happen - and, correspondingly, if things have gone wrong for a while, you'll be due an upswing in your fate soon. This makes me very wary of moments when I should, apparently, be celebrating. Holidays where the view is perfect and the weather ideal really worry me. Scenarios of disaster haunt me: something appalling is bound to happen soon. Professional success can be just as alarming. Storming up the bestseller list can be a reason to hide in bed in despair. I feel that, by being miserable before anyone tells me to be, I will escape the jealousy of higher forces. I am trying to disappoint myself before the world gets a chance to do it rudely for me. As for when things go wrong, I like to wallow and exaggerate the misfortune, for only when I'm at rock bottom can I have a sense that now something or someone will smile more benevolently on me.

Behind such absurd ideas, there's an even stranger faith in the interconnectedness of events. So I believe - without admitting to myself that I'm doing this - there is some connection between the disappointment I suffer at the hands of a publisher at 11am one morning and the piece of good news that comes the following evening. I feel as if I have "earned" the positive event in the eyes of something or someone who is keeping a giant ledger in the sky.

Even more striking is that I am, on the surface, entirely committed to atheism, with a mocking scorn for those who would have a moment's patience for such things''

exactly what i was about to say.