While sometimes it feels that when it rains, it pours, we can’t just give up, stop working, or bury our heads in the sand and just expect those clouds to pass. That’s how shit spirals out of c0ntrol and gets broken beyond repair. When you push yourself to the brink and things still seem to be going wrong, you have to look yourself in the mirror and realize these are the times that define us as people. Its easy to smile and go to work or school every day when everything is going right and you’re living comfortably. But when you still make yourself get your ass out of the bed every morning and do those things even though you are an emotional wreck, that’s when you find out who you really are. I had just become a daddy and moved back to Florida from Los Angeles right before Cali was born to try and have a family. That blew up in my face, and I ended up heading to Seattle for grad school. I didn’t know a single person upon arriving there, and the strains of being that far from home and a newborn daughter drove me to drinking and wandering just about everywhere, alone. I still flew back once an month to see Cali. Most days I didn’t feel like getting out of bed, let alone doing graduate work and going to class. But I made myself anyway and every night I would walk back to my apartment feeling a little better, a little more invigorated. And shit started to change. Every time I felt like I was on the brink of disaster, something would come along to pull me through to the next day, then the next month, and on to graduation. Some might say it was just work. Or karma. Sometimes I will just put it simply as being luck. Negative people will always tell you they have the worst luck in the world. Well as a former jerk who frowned all the time, let me just say its hard to get lucky when you are sitting around thinking the world hates you.
Today my wife made a breakthrough despite feeling like shit for a while, and I guess it reminded me a lot of back in Seattle. She has been working at two jobs all week, working through emotional duress and today on her day off, she spent it doing some positive work on herself. And lo and behold, a nice piece of mail arrived. She was accepted into school for the Fall and is back on track with her education. Be productive. Be positive. A little luck might come your way.
