Karma, Fate, Something...

Okay, so I've decided, Karma is very, very real.

Of course, I've always been the kind of person who believes that everything happens for a reason.  Like, when I took my daughter to Indiana to visit my parents--she was only a few months old at the time--and I had to haul a baby, a car seat, a stroller, a diaper bag, a carry-on, a checked bag, and a million bottles of formula through an airport by myself.  Talk about tough.

Well, all was well with the trip up, but the way back was horrendous for a couple of reasons (which I will omit because that's not really the point of this particular post) but the worst part was that the airline (which will remain unnamed) broke my stroller.  Like, snapped the axle and the wheel, making it unusable.  So, imagine, I'm all alone at 10pm in the airport trying to carry all my junk through the terminal so my husband can pick us up....Ugh.

Anyway, even though I was exhausted and sooo ready to go home and collapse, I hauled myself into the little complaint office and asked to be reimbursed for my broken stroller.  Then, I asked for additional compensation for the hassle of it all (which I would normally never do).

Then came a free round trip ticket to any place in the continental United States. 

Which I used toward my trip to NYC for the Backspace Writer's Conference.

Which resulted in several manuscript requests.

Which is why I'm killing myself to finish the edits ASAP. 

So, even though my stroller was destroyed, making it nearly impossible to carry a sleeping infant and all her stuff through an airport, it was that icky circumstance that brought me to a really, really great opportunity almost a year later.

I know Karma can be tough on us, and life is almost always harder than we'd like it to be, but she's not a hag ALL the time.  She does have a sweet spot and she does want us to succeed.  But you can't sit around waiting for good things to happen...you must reach for them. You have to take initiative when given the opportunity.

What's the difference between people who are happy and people who are miserable?

Happy people don't know how to fail.  They just don't.