Lucky, or What it Takes

Lucky…it is such a loaded word, isn’t it?

I had a really bad day a couple of days ago – nothing earthshattering – a lost check, a husband accidentally breaking a cell phone, an ankle contusion, a disappointing doctor’s appointment, money worries, a fight with family – but a day that made me question what it is I’ve been trying to do all these years with poetry, and if it was possible to have any kind of “successful” life given the health stuff I’ve been handed by the universe.

I used to work ninety hour work weeks as a technical manager, until the combination of a heritable bleeding disorder and connective tissue autoimmune problems almost killed me. I was literally forced to rethink the way I was living, and had to quit my very demanding job. And since I quit, that was almost ten years ago now, I decided to try to live a life around what I really wanted to do – which was write poetry. I volunteered for literary organizations, I went and got an MFA and then taught at an MFA as an adjunct, I published first a chapbook, then a book and then two books. I haven’t been able to do some things a writer really should do to be successful – travel a lot for book tours, for example, or go to AWP every year – mostly because of health reasons, but sometimes also money reasons (the lack of a full-time job is not great for finances, in case you were wondering…) I’ve worked almost a year as my city’s Poet Laureate, a position that’s required every ounce of tact, enthusiasm, planning, and the ability to handle challenge and disappointment as well as a thrilling chance to get to know and help my own community. And I’m looking at book three coming out in a couple of months.

All of this is exciting, but is it lucky? What is luck? If you volunteer for ten years and study and work really hard at submitting and dedicating yourself to the craft of poetry writing and do readings/social media…you will still have days when you doubt yourself and your work and wonder if anything you’re doing is worthwhile. You have to remind yourself of your successes and try to ignore the rejections, the empty reading chairs, the unexpected things you’ll take too hard (for instance, my doctor the other day revealing that his son was the head of creative writing at a large university and had won a Stegner fellowship and a Whiting Award and was on his third book. The son was my age. Talk about a blow to your self-esteem while still in a dressing gown! Not cool. For some people it seems so easy…they seem so lucky!) You can not let yourself be stopped by bad things (Flannery O’Connor had lupus and died at my age, 39, but managed to create an amazing body of literary work, friendships, and spirit, for example.) That’s not luck, but determination. You can take advantage of opportunities that come your way, and work hard when you get these opportunities. You can be kind to people in general because being kind is work you probably won’t regret down the line. On your bad days, you have to believe…maybe the combination of hard work, persistence, and luck and faith will somehow win you…if not the life you’ve dreamed of, maybe a life you can be proud of.

Thanks to Robert Brewer for inspiring my meditation with his own blog post on luck, here: http://robertleebrewer.blogspot.com/2013/01/3-ways-to-make-your-own-luck.html