Hey y'all,
Recent events over the past week have had me thinking: What is luck? Or to be more specific, what is good luck?
Is luck random? Or is it based on something a bit more tangible? I don't have the answer, but certainly, I can attest to how feeling "lucky" is a very pleasant feeling.
Earlier this week, I entered a draw for charity and won. A free night's stay in a fancy schmancy hotel in the city the night of our office Christmas party. The irony of winning this prize is that I didn't want to win it. Not at all. A creature of habit, I knew I would have been much happier sleeping in my own bed that night. Plus, what was my cat going to do all by himself over night, other than destroy even more of my property. So I gave the hotel away to some people coming from out of town who would not otherwise have come to the party without it. Whatever. It was for charity. It was no big deal. But I was happy that I could make someone else happy. The end.
The following day I was in Chapters buying some Christmas presents. It turned out they were having a "scratch and save" promotion, though these days I think "scratch and save" can be more accurately described as "scan the bar code and save." Doesn't sound as catchy though...The promotion was that you could save anywhere from 15 to 100% off your purchase, meaning that there was a chance that one could conceivable win their entire purchase. It turns out that I was that one. $100 worth of books for free, just like that.
Enter our Christmas party. Lots of lovely prize draws. Did I win the Wii like I wanted? No, but I did win a coat. Does it fit me? No, but it will make a nice gift for someone for Christmas. Was I annoyed that I didn't win the Wii? Yes. But I am over it. Mostly.
Enter today. Not wanting to cook or do anything remotely requiring effort the night after the above mentioned Christmas party, I let my fingers do the clicking and ordered a small pizza from a local restaurant. As luck would have it, I was eligible to receive 15% off my purchase. Sweet. What arrived at my door 45 minutes later? A medium pizza, an entire order of some sort of delicious looking pasta with all sorts of cheesy goodness, garlic bread and a giant slab of something that looks deliciously chocolaty. All for the price if my small pizza. I'm sorry...what?
Oh, I forgot to mention that in between all of that, I won a free lottery ticket.
The above occurrences of good fortune are small potatoes. No huge windfall. Just small, almost every day occurrences. But it begs the question of why? And why now? If good things come in threes, I used up that quota before the Boston Pizzacopia that arrived at my doorstep just a short while ago.
As an aside, things started looking up for me career-wise a couple of months ago. Since then, without the worry of money - or lack thereof - to weigh me down, I've felt a lightness to my step that I haven't felt in a very long time. I'm happier than I've been in, well, years. To be clear, it's more than money. I've been empowered in my career. People believe in me and in my skillz. That's a wonderful feeling. Scary, but wonderful.
So what's the deal? Am I at the receiving end of luck because I'm happy? Am I happy because I feel like I've been lucky, with the events of the past week only part of what will be a long streak of good things to come, forever and always? I don't have the answer to those questions either, but I do know that the thought of either of the above scenarios ain't too shabby.
TTFN, off to get my luck on.
Bea
