The absolute worst part about walking to the subway for a mile and a half is you have twenty minutes of your mind going into overdrive and imagining things that, it turns out, are just in your imagination. It’s weird, the scenarios that play out in your head when your mind is left to wander. Most of them have little to do with reality, and only slightly more to do with your thoughts at the time. The weirdest part, though, is how, as you run these scenarios through your head, you come to expect them, however implausible or unrealistic. The whole night ends up being judged based on these weird expectations, however implausible or undesirable they may be. You come home with the weird feeling that, despite having a great time, you didn’t live up to some impossible, bizarre measure you had set for yourself.

Is that so weird? Is it just because I’m a writer, or a romantic, or something? I come up with these involved scenarios in my head, good and bad, and then everything is based on those. They are never accurate predictions. Is that getting in the way? Or am I just paving the way for one of the times all this weird imaginative preparation pays off?