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Lucky breaks
May. 28th, 2015 01:14 pmI'm a lucky guy.
I certainly won't discount the fact that I've put in my 10,000 hours of practice, but I don't feel I can take credit for being the type of person who enjoys practicing. My career has been a series of "right place, right time, right preparation", but I know a lot of people who've worked as hard who never got nearly as far.
But this post isn't about me, it's about my dad. The man whose favorite word is "fortuitous" and who often quotes Lefty Gomez "I'd rather be lucky than good".
My career is full of lucky breaks, but my dad's ought to be legendary. Lorain, Ohio was an industrial hub when he moved there in 1969, with the steel mill, shipyard, GM, and Ford plants. My dad hired in at Ford, which was the only one of the four still in business when he retired 35 years later. Even more interesting, he transferred to Avon Lake just a few years before the closing of the Lorain plant, in a multifaceted back story that comes down to another lucky break.
His worst luck coincides with his best: his first day at Ford was a Tuesday, and on Thursday his draft number was called. After getting back from Vietnam he was in a much better position than many of his compatriots, with a job waiting and two years of union seniority he'd accrued in the meantime.
And then, of course, his luck only improved when I turned up :D
I certainly won't discount the fact that I've put in my 10,000 hours of practice, but I don't feel I can take credit for being the type of person who enjoys practicing. My career has been a series of "right place, right time, right preparation", but I know a lot of people who've worked as hard who never got nearly as far.
But this post isn't about me, it's about my dad. The man whose favorite word is "fortuitous" and who often quotes Lefty Gomez "I'd rather be lucky than good".
My career is full of lucky breaks, but my dad's ought to be legendary. Lorain, Ohio was an industrial hub when he moved there in 1969, with the steel mill, shipyard, GM, and Ford plants. My dad hired in at Ford, which was the only one of the four still in business when he retired 35 years later. Even more interesting, he transferred to Avon Lake just a few years before the closing of the Lorain plant, in a multifaceted back story that comes down to another lucky break.
His worst luck coincides with his best: his first day at Ford was a Tuesday, and on Thursday his draft number was called. After getting back from Vietnam he was in a much better position than many of his compatriots, with a job waiting and two years of union seniority he'd accrued in the meantime.
And then, of course, his luck only improved when I turned up :D
