I've spent a lot of time writing. right now I'm about a quarter through the first re-write of a novel, something that has eaten up hour after hour of my days, and I can't shake the feeling that it is roughly similar to buying a lottery ticket and my odds of the novel finding success are probably worse than me winning $150K friday night in the multi-state lottery.

How much of life is just a crap shoot? Over the past three years I have lost two grandparents, an uncle, been in two car accidents, my dad was in a motorcycle accident and have buried two family pets who had been around for 15 years a piece. Friends and family meet with varying degrees of success in life and I can't say that their successes and failures are necessarily related in any real way to the amount of work or effort they put into life. In fact, in most cases, it seems like the exact opposite happens. I know people who work themselves into the ground and have never gotten the reward they deserve.

It makes it feel like life is a big lottery at times. I've often heard Kevin Smith interviewed where he says that he's won the lottery of life. That largely through sheer luck and chance, Clerks became a massive hit and he has went on to have a hugely successful career. Which of course  isn't saying that success isn't entirely independent of effort. If Kevin Smith never makes Clerks he never becomes the director that he is. Just as if I never finish my novel, I stand no chance of being published. But the point is that the vast vast majority of people do the equivilant of finishing a novel or filming clerks with their day-to-day lives. They get up, go to work, do pretty much everything they are supposed to do and scrape by. And it's really through no fault of their own. Life just broke that way for them.

Whether buying a ticket or writing a novel or going to school, it feels like it's all just one big lottery.