Bad Luck

This afternoon, I had started writing something else. An exciting new project that will never see the light of day. Maybe it will under a nom de plume. I don't know. It's early in the writing project and it may turn out to be nothing. I just don't know. A major problem I've been having lately is that I might have too many project monkeys throwing poop at me right now. Unfortunately, I don't have the time, energy or concentration to work on just one. I supposed it's a good problem to have. Maybe the reason the reason I don't want to concentrate on one is that I don't want to finish anything. But that's a talk I want to have right now and not the reason I'm writing this piece tonight. I'm writing because of this post about good luck by my buddy Brian. Go read it. I'll wait. 

When I was in my late teens/early twenties, I was a basketcase. (Some would say very little has changed.) My mom would often lament, "If not for bad luck, you would have none." I bought into that idea and it became my "Dante's Lament" in those days. I wanted to believe it. And I did. But there was more than that.

I made a lot of bad decisions at this time in my life, but if I needed something to break right, it would break left. Every time. It was easy to blame bad luck. It was certainly easier than blaming myself for all the things I was doing wrong in my life. I felt like I couldn't even make the right decisions because I knew that whatever I decided, it was going to go wrong. Where Brian mentioned Polyanna, I compare it to Charlie Brown. I was good ol' Chuck and life was the football. Lucy was luck or fate or whatever you want to call it. yanking the football away just as I was about to kick it. So my philosophy became diving into wrong blindly with no regard. I don't know as if I've ever quite recovered from those days and they remain a dark spot on my history. One I dredge up more often than I care to admit. (It actually reared it ugly head this weekend.)

Looking back, which I loathe doing, was my bad decisions combined with my cautiousness that I've talked about before that led to my life being a hot mess. Luck had very little to do with it. I wasn't willing to take chances and preferred comfort. I shied away from risk and chances. It cost me dreams, but I'm not going to retread those now. 

Luck was an easy scapegoat. When things are going good, our own humility tells us that it's not our talent or skill, that's boasting, but luck. We won't take credit for our own success. When things are going bad, especially when we are making really, really bad decisions and we definitely don't want to take responsibility for those decisions, we blame it on bad luck. Maybe it's time we accept responsibility for our selves (Christ, that sounds Randian, doesn't it?). Or maybe, we make like Sky Masterson and let it roll.