Luck

“Let me put you on speaker,” I said to the phone as I set it on the bookshelf next to me.

My sister, Marty, had called just as I’d pulled the last box out of the office closet. I’d spent the past hour unpacking the remaining half-dozen boxes I’d stuffed in the office closet a year ago, after I moved from Albuquerque to Saint Paul. They didn’t contain anything essential, so I’d put them in cold storage to be dealt with later—and later had arrived.

I’d successfully unpacked five of them, and Marty had called at the moment I’d pulled out box six, labeled “Beth – personal.”

“What’s in it?” Marty asked.

“No idea, really. I packed this so long ago—possibly in Houston. I don’t think I ever unpacked it in Albuquerque, even.”

“Ooh, it’s like Christmas. Narrate it to me as you pull things out.”

I punched the tip of the box cutter blade through the cellophane tape, now brittle with age, and ran the blade along the top seam.

“Hold on a sec,” I said as I slid the knife blade back inside the handle and set it next to the phone. “Now, the great unveiling.”

Marty’s laugh echoed from the phone.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s my old yearbooks and stuff,” I chuckled. “I wish you were here to see this. A Big Chief tablet!” 

“I don’t think I have any of my yearbooks anymore,” she said. “I think I tossed them before the last move.”

“Jeez, a bunch of my short stories from college, too, and…what’s this?” I reached deeper and pulled out a three-inch white binder. “Oh! All my original clips! I thought these were lost to time.”

“Don’t throw any of that stuff,” Marty said in a stern tone. “Your writing is precious. I would love to read it all.”

I assured her I would never throw away old work or short stories. You never know what might have value for reworking and potentially selling somewhere, even after all this time. One thing I’d learned about creative writing: the best stories tell a timeless tale. The fact I’d produced these in the late 1990s didn’t mean the truths they held wouldn’t be relevant today.

I tossed wads of crumpled newsprint from the box and reached into the bottom. “Oh, man. Apparently I kept all my Planner Pads. There’s…one, two, three…eleven of them. My calendars from when I was freelancing.”

“That’s fascinating,” Marty replied. “A little archive.”

“Why, though? Again, I say: who keeps this stuff?”

Marty’s tone turned thoughtful. “I suppose we keep it for the record. For the details.”

We chatted a little more and hung up so I could figure out what to do with all the things I’d unboxed. In addition to the paper planners, I’d unboxed a sixth-grade scrapbook, an autograph book, my dad’s old crossing guard uniform from approximately 1935, and folders stuffed with papers and things from my college era.

Standing back to survey the shelf space, I organized things. Dad’s old uniform suspended here, using straight pins and velcro cable keepers. Now, surround it with photos of him and his siblings. Done.

Next, my personal junk. Maybe I should have left it in the box. I gathered up the scrapbook, yearbooks, and old college papers and stood them up on a shelf. No harm in curating a little personal archive.

Then I considered the Planner Pads, nearly identical spiral-bound paper planners—each with the year stamped in gold on the cover. These eleven spanned the core of my freelance writing career, from 2014 to 2024. I picked up the 2015 calendar and ran my hand over it. This one had my name embossed on it, too.

I flipped it open to a random page.

The sidebar on the right edge of the page contained a sort-of shorthand: clients listed by abbreviation alongside their booked revenue for the month.

StL Children’s…1950
BJWCH…1950
IA…800
JH…2925

Beneath these, a tally line and a final figure: 7625. Not bad for one month of work.

I riffled through the pages and landed on October. Not as good a month: only $1200 booked. The vagaries of freelance cash flow.

A couple more page flips. November 14 was denoted “Sec E, Row G, Seats 9-10. OPERA – Tosca.”

I sat back in my chair and gazed out the window. The sky looked clear. A skein of Canada geese appeared, flying and honking their way northward. A little late for you, isn’t it? I asked them silently.

I glanced down at the planner, open in my lap. Mom and I had loved attending Houston Grand Opera when we lived in Texas. I traced my finger over the notation. I remember when we saw Tosca. The opera house was decorated for the holidays, and we paid extra to walk a buffet line with complimentary champagne. I smiled.

Closing the planner, I tried to heave the full stack of eleven onto the bookshelf all at once but lost my grip, and they tumbled onto the floor. As I laughed at myself, I picked them up one by one and set them upright next to the scrapbook and the folders and the binder of clips, filling the shelf so tightly no bookend was needed.

The record

I picked up the box cutter and began cutting through all the taped seams to flatten the boxes. A tidy pile. I loaded them into my little wire cart, took the elevator to -1, and tossed them into the recycling dumpster.

Back in my office, I stood back to admire my work. The bookcase display looked excellent. I had to admit, it was fun to have my childhood things easily accessible. I couldn’t wait to look at that scrapbook again. I could see the pale blue printing of duplicator pages peeking out of it and wondered what on Earth I’d found so charming from sixth grade that I felt compelled to keep it.

And the Planner Pads. I plopped back down in my office chair and pulled down the 2014 one. I still didn’t know why I’d kept these. What was the point? I couldn’t mine them for data anymore. I couldn’t even identify some of the clients because miny own shorthand eluded me. What did “TG news blogs” mean?

I turned a sheaf of pages and landed on a random week. Friday, September 12. Just one notation, written in blue ink: “RN2w newsletter for October.” I hadn’t realized I’d been working on RN2writer much then. In 2014? I thought I was primarily freelancing. I began paging backwards, one week at a time.
I’d written various headings into the columns in the top section of my Planner Pad: Client Work, Marketing, Biz Admin, Special Projects, Mom.

Keeping my tasks and life separated into tidy silos.

Under Special Projects for the week of April 28-May 4, 2014, a notation: “RN-to-Writer. SEO know/needs 3 things, capacity calculation.” Was this the week my course-and-coaching business was conceived? I didn’t remember that.

By the week of May 26, the re-christened “RN2writer” had been moved from Special Projects into its own heading in the Planner Pad. “Plan blog posts. Set up newsletter. Ning group.” What was Ning? No idea.

The week of July 7: “Short ebook. Newsletter. Webinars – design. Coaching – design.” I didn’t recall conceptualizing RN2writer so fully in the beginning. Only that I had an idea to launch a blog, and nothing more.

The week of July 28: “Info products.” Was this a brainstorming note? Because I certainly did not launch RN2writer with any “info products.”
Meanwhile, the client work column looked packed: “OMG Always On. OMG Portion Control. OMG Motion Sickness. TG Cystic Fibrosis. TG Huntington’s. TG Blog posts x 3. WebMD.” Eight or more deliverables in a month. That’s a full load.

Then August 19: “RN2writer publish.” The day the first blog post went live. This I did remember because I keep a screenshot of the first blog post on my desktop, and it bears the date August 19, 2014.

I leaned back again and focused on the sky. Light bounced off the glass of Galtier Tower and into my face. I frowned and swiveled away from it.

I didn’t remember conceiving RN2writer with so much thought. The planner read almost like a business plan, and that’s not how I recalled the situation at all.

I remembered creating RN2writer on a whim. “I know, I’ll launch a blog teaching other nurses how to be writers and run advertising in the sidebars.” Now, confronted with all the notes from my planner, I could see that advertising wasn’t even mentioned. Ebook. Info products. Webinars (was I thinking “courses”?). Coaching.

Heartburn

I closed the Planner Pad and tucked it back onto the shelf. I didn’t feel like reading any further. A sourness had settled in my stomach.

The story I had told myself – and the story I’d told others, many times – about RN2writer being a lucky idea, a thought that came to me one day and succeeded wildly of its own volition…was a lie.

I plodded to the kitchen. Maybe an apple would ease the heartburn. 

If it wasn’t luck, then why had I always characterized it as such? Why not take credit for building a successful company?

Taking credit isn’t easy because it can sound arrogant, though I’ve never hesitated to brag about the money I made as a freelance writer. No, this was something else. 

Luck asks nothing of you. It demands no accountability. A lucky idea that fails isn’t your fault. It just didn’t work out. Luck protects your ego.

But an idea you conceived and planned, that’s different. If it fails, it’s on you. 

On the other hand, if it doesn’t fail – if it succeeds beyond your dreams – that’s a problem. Because if you let luck take the blame, you have to let it take the credit, too.

Had I chalked RN2writer up to luck because I’d thought it might fail? Or because, while I was living it, it never felt like a plan at all?

I tossed the half-eaten apple into the trash. Heartburn still smoldering. Perhaps a walk to cure it.

“I suppose we keep it for the record. For the details.” Marty’s words echoed back to me. 

As I shoved earbuds into my ears and gathered my keys, I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me.

 

The heart of the matter

Here's my question for you this week: What have you been calling luck that your own record would call a plan?

Please hit reply to this email or to ShiftNotes and tell me. Also please know that while I can’t respond to everyone who replies, I do read every response. That’s all for this week. See you next Sunday.