Odd thoughts on success and hard work

[valarltd]

I have long maintained that hard work accomplishes nothing but destruction of the worker.

I believe success is 90% luck and 10% work.

In the luck column of my life:
born white, middle-class
reasonably well educated
viewed college not as a goal, but as a logical extension of high school.
was in the right place at the right time to meet my future husband

Every job I've had, I've gotten by a combination of luck, timing and a good handshake and smile. The skill requirements have been as minimal as the pay. I may have worked 6 day weeks, but we were still always hand-to-mouth.

When I left the library, the truckdriving was an acquired skill, with much hard work. That is the one thing I have worked for. But when I was hired by Falcon, it was for a specific run that they had coming open at just that time. Ditto Schneider. Pure luck.

Even the writing. Writing is work, never let anyone tell you otherwise.
But publishing was connections and luck. I knew squashed from the old Master_Apprentice list in the late 90s. When she put up the call for Monsters, I happened to see it. They took the story. I started writing more, but I know acceptance is not just predicated on skill and technique and hard work, but also on the editor's needs, their mood and other odd bits of star alignment and arcana. Meeting reannon at MidSouth was pretty much luck (someone saw Prey, nominated me for the Darrell and all that), and she turned me on to Ellora's Cave.

You can work hard all your life and never manage to move above hand-to-mouth, if that.
You can stumble into opportunities and seize them and maybe get a little better. Maybe.

I'm working on the Maybe.

Comments

[nbrooks.livejournal.com]

And how curious that Master_Apprentice was my entire life in the late 90's and early 2000's and we did not meet. Admittedly, I was a lurker and very rare contributer. But what time I was not spending getting the last few classes of my degree, I spent with Qui/Obi and that list. :D

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I was just a lurker myself. I never wrote Q/O in the 90s
I'm not sure I ever even posted.