Years ago, I was stuck in the checkout line at Grocery Outlet in downtown Oakland, and all the magazines made me HATE humanity, and I made my peace with it by thinking;

rather than this reflecting that 98% of my fellows are this awful, maybe it's only 25-40% because that's the best you can predict and all you need to keep going selling magazines.

I am now thinking about this in the PTSD/childhood context. You won't find Model Railroader or Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette in the Grocery Outlet check out. You will PROBABLY find them at Barnes and Noble. You will DEFINITELY find them at a railway museum gift shop. Not all places have the same chance of a rule being true.

I am also thinking about this with unemployment, and personal success etc. I grew up with this huge personal responsibility put on me - but I know life is full of randomness. Rather than my (sometimes lacking) intelligence, drive, skills and adaptability granting me a 98-100% chance of success (where if I fail, it is obviously my fault), even a version of me that's able to push has a 25-40% chance of success.

But on the flip side, someone else being "better" than me, chosen to receive whatever over me? What if that chance is *also* a 25%-40% deal of their intelligence, skills, and (you knew this, coming out of my background, was going to surface) better looks/more extroversion? There's a lot of employer decision making which is opaque to me - internal candidates might surface or have always been preferred, interns might do the job for cheaper, reqs can get cancelled, snap decisions could be made or forced. A lot of different reasons I might lose out and so might someone who is a legitimately better applicant.