I was accused of being a pessimist today. It was a fairly routine conversation at work, a discussion of projects, timelines, and expectations for what is going to happen over the course of a project. My boss and my coworker were discussing their optimistic outlook and some information they’d gotten recently that made them expect good things. I contend that I merely brought them back to reality by reminding them of some important bits of information about the project and the course of similar projects in the past, but they felt that I was just looking for a reason to be miserable. I told them that I’d stop saying things like this when I was proved wrong and we all walked away from the conversation feeling discontent.