What the rerun costs you

It's worth being plain about what the habit costs, because from the inside it feels cheap. A wish that fails is just a wish. Nothing was lost but the picture.

The first cost is years. If a wish has been on the list for five Januaries, that's five years of a thing you wanted not happening, and the not-happening had a price each year that has nothing to do with the January in which it was set. Five years of not running is five years less fit. Five years of not sorting the money is five years of the money as it was. The wish was free. The five years weren't.

The second cost is the story you tell about yourself, and chapter 15 was about that. Each rerun adds a line to it, and the line is always the same, and by the fourth or fifth year the story is settled enough that you set the wish already expecting the drop, which is not a good state in which to meet a Tuesday.

The third cost is quieter. It's what the drop does to the ordinary version of the thing. Someone who has failed at "run a half marathon" three years running often stops walking. Someone who has failed at "write the novel" stops writing anything. The wish set the least version out of reach, and when the wish went, it took the least version with it, and the least version was the part that would have been worth having. A person who walked every Tuesday for five years is fitter than one who trained for a half marathon three Januaries in a row. That's my arithmetic and not a finding, but I don't think the finding would surprise anyone.

The fourth cost is the people who heard the wish. You told them, in the good fortnight, and they asked in March, kindly, and you changed the subject. It's a small thing. It's just that the wish, having been said out loud, now has a small audience for its failure, and next year you'll say it more quietly or not at all, and a wish said to no one has one less reason to become a Tuesday.

None of these costs is large in a single year. All of them are paid again each January. That's what a rerun is.