I think that's less true than Picasso - "Inspiration exists, but it has to catch you working". Or indeed Palmer - "The more I practice, the luckier I get". It's important to be flexible and open to serendipity - but it's all too easy to use that as an excuse to avoid putting in any effort.

I speculate that DFW's take on it would be something like: sure, we can reap some rewards by working hard and being prepared, but really the amount that those things affect our lives is really small compared to huge, uncontrollable things, like which genetics you were dealt, or whether your parents were killed by a tornado when you were 5, or what country you are born in.

We spend a lot of time rationalizing that our successes are somehow due to our efforts and our failures are somehow not our fault. We especially idolize high-status successes, like Picasso, and venerate such rationalizations when they come from such people. And we especially despise such rationalizations when they come from the poor, and so we hold silent contempt when we hear the homeless man on the subway explaining why it's not his fault he is so down on his luck.

But [I think DFW might say] in the end it's still really just one fatalistic crapshoot. That's not a good reason to work harder, nor is it a good reason to slack off and just say "c'est la vie." It's not a reason for anything ... it's just how things are.

I'm not saying this hypothetical DFW point of view is right. I'm just saying I don't think it has that much to do with rationalizations about past successes being used as motivation.

The lesson from the quote would be to actually observe more for what you are looking. Coincidences are common, but it isn't serendipity until you actually notice it.

>I think I just feel saturated by online dating and the pre-engineered and instant gratification feelings that can come along with it.

Instant gratification seems to be the downfall of many a relationship. The honey-moon effect (iirc the name) is a problem if one or both partners rely on instant gratification to sustain the relationship.

I didn't seek instant gratification, nor did my partners. And in fact, one thing I had in common with each partner was a mutual dislike of the online interface through which we met specifically because we felt it forced instant gratification mindset upon you.

This is only an anecdote, of course, so others may have vastly different experiences. But for me, it felt impossible to interact with almost all other participants in a dating platform unless you did seek instant gratification -- because that's what everyone else was evaluating in you (the ability to serve as instant gratification for them).

That's what I mean in terms of disliking the instant gratification aspects of the dating platforms. It seems integral to the platform, regardless of whether it's part of what you personally are seeking (it wasn't for me) and this has been constant across several different platforms over a fairly long period of time, so it seems more like a consistent trait of online dating platforms than a particular consequence of how one uses them.

Every relationship is engineered, one way or another.

Hey, I agree. I just don't necessarily always want the very first part to be.