Yeah. The reason I connected with my husband at the tender age of 19 is that I was in a mental illness self-advocacy and performance group, which he was attending for extra credit as a psychology student. We knew each other prior to that and were not close, until he saw my performance and told me he was impressed with my work and my courage. So if those “misfortunes" hadn’t befallen me, I wouldn’t have him, my kid, the writing group, the job, nothing.
Your way is the better way.
Sooooo much luck…
I’ve been ADD my whole life (undiagnosed until my 60s). I’m surprised I could hold down one job, let alone the assortment of diverse ones I’ve had. And I’ve changed careers a number of times, and my degree (BS, biochem) had nothing to do with any of it.
So the fact that I had one career counseling students and another designing ad campaigns and another teaching at a tech school, and now being a fine artist (ok, a “pretty good” artist) … is baffling to me.
And all my close friends/girlfriends have been “out of my league”: wonderful, high quality people. Including my amazing wife and my kids.
WHY do these people hang around with me?
I would say mostly luck, but I did make a few job-related choices that worked out pretty well. I would characterize them as “making the system work for me”*.
*For example, I volunteered to work every weekend on the evening shift as opposed to having being randomly assigned weekend duty on a rotating basis. I still got two days off during the week (of my choosing) and since I normally worked the day shift I got time and a half for the evening shifts. This amounted to a 10% raise, 1 hour less a week of work (since day shift tours included 1/2 hour for lunch) and a lot less stress overall.
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…
My health has been a struggle my whole life. It ain’t got any better.
But my parents were great.
My Mother died when I was a young child. Daddy filled in. Great, great Father.
I have a large sibling group. That was either bad or good luck. According to the day.
I have some talents. Never could’ve been fullfilled. My health prevented it.
Married young to an older man who had his finances set well before I was in the picture. So we have what we need and some goodies.
I see like this, some people with very trying situations are just born under the unlucky stars.
You gotta play the hand you’re dealt.
A readiness to accept whatever life may throw my way…and enough madness to make it work.
My best decision was moving from Bristol, TN to Brooklyn, NY. That’s where I met the future Ms. P, after only going past one date once in my old stomping grounds.
Good luck, in general, in my choice of parents. They modeled industriousness and paying your way. They modeled a well-matched pair who supported each other for 57 years. Unfortunately, they didn’t model knowing how to make your children feel loved. I came to grips with that through therapy, so that I feel like I understand them and the struggles they had; but the influence on my relationships with others was and is pervasive.
Good luck, also, in what I view as my general level of mental and physical ability, also nourished and encouraged by my parents. I always found it more comfortable to focus on mental abilities, which I think disappointed my father, much as he tried to hide it. I had enough smarts to bring me a decent income, and enough luck to do it with a company that is paying my pension as we speak. I never desired being more than comfortable, and that’s what we are. Some of that is also due to the luck of having a father who, by dint of his struggles, had an estate to leave behind.
I have never yet had any serious bad luck, as in crushing disasters that probably would have knocked me out of the game if they had happened (although maybe not). Some pretty good management, with saving and buying a house in San Francisco by the skin of my teeth, before prices became completely crazy.
All of this is a litany that is very close to the surface of my consciousness, even as I bemoan the various old-age health issues that I am facing now. Today was a pretty good day, aches-and-pains-wise. More good luck, and maybe a little good management.
That’s the key.
I’m lucky to have had a very happy childhood with supportive parents who valued education and intellectual curiosity, although both of them left school early by today’s standards.
But throughout my life, I’ve been amazed at how shittily things always turn out. I’ve always found what is usually considered routine processes complicated beyond belief by totally unpredictable adverse events.
Just last week, my electricity provider cut off power in my apartment because “a mistake was made at some point” and my account was transferred a year and a half ago to… someone. Someone who doesn’t even live in my building and who stopped paying their electricity bills, leading the company to finally cut off power in my apartment since it was the one matched with the meter. All that during a heatwave, the day after I had filled my fridge with literally hundreds of dollars worth of food. Plus, no internet, no cooking, no piano and no light for a week due to something I couldn’t predict (and no one can explain, actually).
Nothing tragic fortunately, I’ve had a rather uneventful life, but these sort of low-key, mind-boggling unlucky events have pursued me for decades, down to the most mundane tasks.
I’ve never been in real trouble because I tend to manage everything prudently, but if I’d gotten a dollar every time I said “This has got to be a ******* joke, right ?”, I’d be able to… pay for a very nice vacation with my daughters in an exotic location.
About a year ago, I realized that I had absolutely zero control on those events. But I do have control on how I react to them. This change of mindset, added to my natural carefulness, has been a game-changer. I haven’t felt this serene and at peace since I was a kid.
A bit of both I suppose.
I inherited a bit of money when I really needed it. Bought a used car.
Worked like crazy since I was 12 years old. Continued, and continued. 33 years now at the same company that has a good retirement plan. Nice nest egg. That’s both luck and management.
Bought a house 33 years ago when at same company mentioned above. Man, those where some lean years. But I managed to pay the thing off early.
In fact, I sold said house for 10x the amount I bought it for. That happened yesterday. Literally, the money was deposited in my accounts yesterday. That’s also luck and management.
My Wife and I have used the proceeds of the sale of the house to buy a new one. My Wife of 27 years is a residential property appraiser. She did 75% of the leg work finding a new place for us, and dam, she did a perfect job. We love our new place.
It’s kind of funny, my wife taught our real estate person some appraisal rules about what the new owners can deduct. Something about personal property. And I actually showed/sold the house. I was home when some looky loos drooped by.
Not that there have not been plenty of difficulties along the route. But we have manage to pick our selves up, dust our selves off and move forward.
My Wife will retire around Halloween.
I will retire around Christmas.
It’s a long row to hoe, but it has been worth it.
All three: Good management of good luck & bad luck.
I started out as a blue-collar family white kid in suburbia that made good choices in college and career moves. Even with the roller coaster in personal setbacks (bad luck) and professional goal setting & achievements (good management), I came out in a darn decent state after the military to my current job & family situation (good luck borne from earlier good management).
I’m not gonna sugar coat things though; mistakes were made. Ya just gotta scrounge up from resources on-hand to press on.
Tripler
I still am willing to turn wrenches and get my hands dirty–best self-management philosophy I’ve ever had.
I mean, it’s complicated. I could say that it’s been good management… but I learned how to do that from my family, especially my mother, and it’s not like I prudently chose who my mother was. And there are plenty of times when I didn’t even need to roll the dice, because of her good management dating back to decades before I was born.
Bad luck with parents and the aftermath of that.
Good management by continuing to work on it until I found a therapy that works.
Good luck with happening to be sent to Japan when I signed up as a missionary. That got me into Asia and my life changed completely.
Hard to distinguish some times. I have good genes, but I also work hard and don’t coast. Is that management or genetics?
I’m 73, and have only been in the hospital one night since I was born. Is that luck, or management in terms of eating healthy, not smoking, drinking very little?
I had plenty of money to retire in no small part due to never being laid off. Was that luck, in being in the right place at the right time, or management, making myself too valuable to get fired. I know plenty of people just as valuable in the wrong organization, though.
I have had little or no bad luck my entire life.
Probably both, mostly genetics. I can’t recall a single time in my relationship my husband was hospitalized, whereas I’ve had a few very big ones, including a gall bladder infection that almost killed me and multiple grand mal seizures.
I know people far unluckier than me in health, too. I know a woman who has an incredible number of ailments including multiple auto-immune disorders and a condition that was giving her hundreds of kidney stones. The doctor didn’t believe her until she brought them to him in a bin. She’s in pain almost all the time, but somehow manages to be one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know.
My life: Not much luck either way, but a whole lot of bad management.
I beat the odds through mostly good management, I suppose.
I grew up in a lower-middle class family. My father was a blue-collar worker, and my mother stayed home (at least initially). Neither were educated. My father left when I was 12, so it became just my mother and us three kids. We became lower class poor after that. My mother found a job, and I would help her clean people’s homes in the evenings to help pay the bills. Needless to say, we had no money and college was never talked about. To make matters worse, my mother became addicted to prescription drugs, our living conditions was making me depressed, and I was doing terrible in high school. I was also hanging out with the “long-haired, heavy-metal kids” who only wanted to party. I remember sitting in the guidance counselor’s office at my high school and him asking me, “So, what are you plans after high school?” I said, “I love tinkering with electronics, and want to be an electrical engineer!” He gave me a dubious look and said, “(Ahem.) Well, Crafter_Man, your GPA is only 2.8. I really think you should enroll in a trade school.”
I didn’t want to go to a trade school. I applied for a couple local engineering colleges after I graduated, and (not surprisingly) neither accepted me. Not to be dissuaded, I enrolled in something called “University College” at the University of Cincinnati with an undeclared major. I was so poor that I qualified for all kinds of grants. I took the same courses the engineers took (calc, physics, etc.) and worked my ass off. Got a 3.8 GPA at the end of my freshman year. Applied again to UC’s College of Engineering, and this time I got in. Graduated with a BSEE from UC in 1992, and a MSEE from the University of Dayton in 2010. Been working as an EE ever since, and love it.
My life hasn’t been perfect, but it’s turned out pretty well considering what I went through when growing up. Was an uphill battle, that’s for sure. Statistically it wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to turn out like my brother and sister.
Thinking about it, a lot is the advancement of medicine. In 1962 my father had a blood clot in his leg, and he was in the UN hospital in the Congo for 6 weeks, very touch and go. (He helped set up the hospital so he got a floor all to himself.) In 2008 or so he got another blood clot at age over 90. He got a stent and was out in two days. My prostate cancer treatment didn’t exist 30 years ago. It took an hour or so and I was out of there, cured. That would have been a hospital stay for sure not that long ago.
I think for me it was privilege, luck, ability, effort, management, in that order. Hard to say, though!