I don’t believe in superstitions. I’m a data guy. I measure things. I calculate. I remove emotion from decisions and replace it with spreadsheets and statistics. So it’s absolutely mortifying to admit that I almost didn’t write this.

Because I stirred my coffee counterclockwise this morning, and something genuinely terrifying happened.

Let me back up. I’m 40 years old. I’ve been making coffee roughly the same way for 15 years. Left hand on the mug. Small spoon. Circular stirring motion. Clockwise. Always clockwise. This is not negotiable. It’s the only direction that feels right.

Then last Tuesday, my wife grabbed my mug while I was staring at my Galaxy Watch checking my sleep data from last night, and she stirred it counterclockwise three times.

“Stop,” I said. Too late. The damage was done. The coffee had been defiled.

“It’s just a direction,” she said, handing the mug back with that look people get when they’re watching someone be ridiculous.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t just coffee anymore.

A Totally Rational Explanation

I’m going to explain this logically because I need you to understand I’m not insane.

When you stir clockwise, you’re moving with the Earth’s rotation. You’re moving with the natural order of celestial bodies. You’re literally moving in the same direction that governs planetary motion, seasonal cycles, and the fundamental physics of the universe. This is not superstition. This is elementary astronomy.

Counterclockwise is against all that.

Counterclockwise is chaos. Counterclockwise is disorder. Counterclockwise is the direction bacteria grow in petri dishes and the direction hurricanes spin in the Southern Hemisphere—and everyone knows hurricanes are bad.

So when my wife stirred my coffee counterclockwise, she didn’t just stir it. She inverted the fundamental energy of my morning. She created a vortex of wrongness right there in my favorite mug.

This Is Where It Gets Weird

I drank that coffee anyway. (I’m not a quitter, even when confronted with clear evidence of malevolent stirring patterns.)

Then everything fell apart.

First, my Xiaomi scale showed I’d gained three pounds overnight. Three pounds. In eight hours. Physically impossible unless I’d consumed roughly 10,500 calories between 11 PM and 7 AM, which I hadn’t. But the scale doesn’t lie. The scale is scientific. The scale measures mass. The scale said I had mysteriously become heavier because I drank coffee that was stirred wrong.

Then, my entire day was off by 23 minutes. I have no better explanation for this. I left my house at 8:00 AM (exactly, check my location data). The drive is 27 minutes. I arrived at 8:37 AM. That’s 37 minutes, not 27 minutes. Where did those 10 extra minutes come from? I didn’t stop anywhere. The traffic data confirms this. But the time was just… gone.

My smartwatch malfunctioned. It claimed I’d taken 14,000 steps when I sat at my desk all day. My productivity calendar got corrupted. A meeting that happened on Monday somehow appeared on Tuesday in my schedule. My coffee maker broke that afternoon. The wifi cut out for exactly 13 minutes. Birds outside my window were acting strange.

I documented all of this. I have screenshots.

The Real Problem

Rational people ask: “Did you really believe stirring counterclockwise caused all this?”

And the answer is complicated.

On one level, no. Obviously not. I know causality. I understand that stirring direction doesn’t create temporal anomalies or cause weight fluctuations or summon technical malfunctions.

But here’s what I can’t explain: after I stopped drinking that coffee and switched to a new pot (stirred clockwise, seven times to counteract the damage), everything normalized. My scale went back to its correct readings. My productivity returned. The birds calmed down.

This could be coincidence.

Or this could be that the universe is fundamentally stranger than we admit, and we’re all just trying to maintain control by pretending coffee stirring direction doesn’t matter when it absolutely might.

The Confession

I’ve now stirred every coffee clockwise for the past eight days. Religiously. Obsessively. My wife thinks I’ve lost it.

But here’s the embarrassing part: I actually looked up coffee superstitions on the internet. And I discovered I’m not the only person who thinks this way. There are forums. Entire communities of people who track their stirring patterns. Some people believe counterclockwise stirring invites negative energy. Others swear by specific stirring speeds depending on the time of day.

One woman claims she can predict her mood for the entire day based on which direction she stirred her morning coffee.

Another man documents his life results based on his coffee stirring methodology. He has a spreadsheet. (I immediately downloaded his template.)

So am I superstitious? No. But am I now absolutely certain that clockwise stirring produces better life outcomes?

Absolutely.

And if that’s superstition, then superstition is just pattern recognition that science hasn’t caught up to yet.

One more thing: I counted them carefully this morning. Seven clockwise stirs. Not six. Not eight. Seven.

Because some things require precision, even when nobody else understands why.