This week I’ve been thinking a bit about luck. It’s one of those constants in all of our lives and fluctuates between playing a leading role or blending into the background. This thought sparked when a friend mentioned that I’m one of the luckiest people she knew. Lucky? Yes, but only if you believe that luck is a spectrum from very good to very bad, which I do.
Tuesday was a good example of the luck’s span over a single day. For starters I woke up grumpy after not sleeping very well (this is never a good start because I LOVE sleep above all else). I’d been restless because for the first time in years, the Design Dept was unable to pay me. In a perfect (shit) storm, 20 months of work has ended in the middle of our HUCX liquidation. This lull in work has happened many, many times over 15 years of freelancing and I’ve always survived it but given the current circumstances, I was feeling less resilient than normal.
Tuesday is our lake walk day so Matt managed to pull me out of my slump over the 6km we traversed together. Sometimes I just need to air my concerns out loud and that’s enough to lighten the load. Nothing has actually changed but the burden feels less. This is why I’m a huge advocate for walking things out. If I have a choice, all meetings would be conducted on foot, in nature. As predicted, our lake walk restored my normal sunny disposition.
I’d reached some kind of calm by the time we got home only to see that the massive ‘For Sale’ sign on the house we’re renting had a newly placed, big, fat, ‘under contact’ sticker. I’m not sure if I mentioned that part of the rental story, if you’ve been following along. The house that we moved into 3 months ago (after all the shitty troubles with the last one) was actually for sale. Both Matt and I swear that when we asked the real estate agent if the house had just been purchased, he said yes. After a few weeks of living there we asked for the ‘For Sale’ sign to be removed given the PTSD experience with the last rental having an open home every 2 weeks for the last 8 months of our tendency.
The real estate agent got back to us after a month and said that the house was in fact still for sale. So we’d moved from one uncertain housing situation to another. Being the constant optimists that we all have to be if you want to survive in this world, we reframed the situation. Since we had to sell our land and would no longer be building a house, maybe, just maybe we could put an offer on this house once all the HUCX dust settles.
Alas, this was not to be as we soaked in the consequences of the ‘under contract’ sticker. We still have 9 months left on our 12 month lease but we have no idea if the new owners will want to move in or if they’re investors and will be happy for us to continue renting for the foreseeable future. Again, it's a roll of the dice and goes to show how little control renters have over their living situations. The most disappointing part is how we found out. Someone putting a sticker up, without any contact with us, the humans who are living there.
By Tuesday afternoon I was pulling on all the techniques to break out of my newly reformed rut. Having already used a walk (the best mood changer) I had to dig deep and remember that we can’t control what we can't control and there is no reason to worry twice. We have no idea what our future holds right now and obviously owning this house wasn’t meant to be part of it. While it feels shitty now, you can only connect the dots backwards and this will all make sense one day…
To finish the day I watched an episode of the Simpsons with Alice where Homer was going through a series of unfortunate events and said it felt like he was in an abusive relationship with his life. On Tuesday this resonated with me. It is so easy to slip into victim mode when things aren’t going well. It was also a great reminder that I have a choice. I can choose to believe that life happens to me or that I make life happen for me.
Luck is believing you're lucky and on Tuesday I forgot that. I am human of course and can have a shitty day for sure but I don’t want to have shitty days. I want to have fun days and productive days and energising days. I don’t want to be wallowing in circumstances that I don’t have control over. Life is far too short for that. Come to think of it, the biggest and most profound events in our lives come down to luck. Good and bad. While it can feel random and unfair sometimes, without a sprinkling of luck, life would be very predictable and boring. Most of us wouldn’t have met our partners or chosen the careers we have.
On Tuesday night I slept well. I had come full circle and knew I’d be ok. I’ve got some much to be grateful for already. Coincidentally Ellen Jackson's newsletter came out and the first line was a quote from Angie McMahon, “The trick was simply to surrender”. This is the advice I needed to hear. Surrender. Ellen wrote the following words and I felt seen:
My word for 2024 was ‘renew’. To give fresh life, reinvigorate.
It should have been ‘surrender’.
Not giving in or giving up.
Not submitting or renouncing fate.
Just letting go, making space.
Unearthing compassion, allowing grace.
Easing my grip, shifting my view.
Challenges endure, but peace fills the space.
On Wednesday morning I got up early to run and I kid you not, there was $10 laying on the footpath outside my house. TEN BUCKS. Now that certainly doesn’t solve any of my problems but if that wasn’t a message from the universe to keep at it then I don’t know what is. Later on that day I dropped a whole lot of stuff at the Op Shop and there was a pair of roller stakes, my size, for $10. I got Alice a pair of skates a while ago and she needs someone to skate with her as practice so I brought them with my $10 from the universe. This could be a terrible idea and this particular series of events could end up with me in hospital with two broken arms but I don’t worry about things twice so I won’t start now.
