In the days and weeks leading up to (and through) Drip's publication, I have found myself within that cause-effect singularity that happens in life whenever we try to accomplish some big project or make some significant personal change: the universe hurls at us every damned thing it can. In the course of this spring, four people I am close to have been hit with major, debilitating illnesses, two family members have been lost (one uncle, one pug), I've been getting asked--seemingly out of the blue--to dive into several major projects that run into conflict with my book promotion work, and that's just in addition to being the proud stay-at-home dad of an 11-month-old girl and trying to stay abreast of/refute the current presidential assault on reason.
Things could certainly be worse, and to be sure the friends and family referenced above have suffered a lot more than I have, but nonetheless I think this confluence of stressful events can be fairly characterized as Some Serious Bullshit.
Whether this is a trick of individual point-of-view or an objective phenomenon I can't say, though I do find Carl Jung's words comforting. He grappled with something similar to what I'm describing, which he called synchronicity. As a scientist, he couldn't violate the principle of causation in explaining meaningful coincidences; to say such coincidences happen because of some invisible force we don't know about would imply "action at a distance," which is code for "magical thinking quackery"; instead, Jung moved synchronicity into the psychological realm and explained it not in terms of cause and effect but, rather, meaning. The basic jist was: these things happen; we don't know how; their importance is in the mind of the observer.
The implication is that when we experience a meaningful coincidence, we would do well to take a good look in the mirror and try to discern what our unconscious mind is trying to tell us. Personally, I feel like my life is telling me to prepare to transition into a new, more outward phase--that's absolutely not a prediction as to how Drip will be received (or that it will be received), but it is an acknowledgement that I have metaphorically undressed in public and advertised, "This is who I am as a fiction writer." I've already done this as a filmmaker of course, but the written word feels to me a little more imposing, a little more permanent--a little harder to hide behind.