Make Your Own Luck

Writer Abroad admits that sometimes she feels like kind of a bitch. She is living the writing life, she is doing it in Europe, and she hasn't even had to starve yet (thanks, Husband IT Manager).

Is she just lucky?

Reporter Michelle V. Rafter would probably say no. On Michelle's blog, WordCount, she has a post today titled, "The luck of the Irish wasn't just luck." In fact, she says, it was more like famine.

Because the thing is, you can look at anyone and say they're lucky. That life's unfair. That you're not as fortunate. But what people that say these things don't usually realize is that the people they consider "lucky" have made their own luck through courage, reinvention, forward-thinking, hard work, and refusal to give up.

If your dream has always been to be a writer living abroad and you're not quite there yet, figure out the steps you need to take so that you're one of the "lucky ones." Before Writer Abroad ever moved abroad, she remembers reading Eric Maisel's A Writer's Paris and thinking she would never be brave enough to give up her real job to write in Europe. But she was. Sort of. After she got another real job and got laid off.

It just took a little luck.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.