Bad Luck Spots

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Life is funny.

It's 7:30 am on Monday, January 30th. The day started like any other day; I made my bed, opened my laptop, edited the latest edition of The Daily Preneur, and ate a cinnamon raisin bagel topped with peanut butter. After an hour of work, I walked downstairs and around the corner – passing some new sidewalk artwork – and got a $1.50 coffee from a nearby deli (the coffee is 👌). I spent another hour on the newsletter – while listening to Fred Again – and sent it shortly after 10 am. So far, so good.

I then responded to a few emails and sent a couple of cold ones. If you're unfamiliar, a 'cold' email has nothing to do with the outside temperature; it's an outreach tactic to introduce yourself to new clients, leads, and employers. It's how I've landed copywriting jobs and introduced myself to new connections. I also shared The Efficiency Trap on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram during that hour.

At 11 am, I started working on some coursework. I read my Macroeconomics textbook and solved a few problems – it was a blast (no, I'm not joking). A well-written textbook can teach you so much if you're willing to dive wholeheartedly into it (but more on that later). After a few hours and a turkey sandwich, it was time to meet with my Entrepreneurship professor, Glen Patterson. We talked about his startup, Workschool, and the future of education (FYI, I will be working with my professor and Workschool to help grow their community).

By late afternoon, all my meetings and coursework were wrapped up. It was finally time to go for a run. It was 53 degrees outside (which is hot for NY this time of the year) and beautiful. My roommate, Jack, and I set out at a comfortable 9-minute-per-mile pace. We ran through Chinatown and around New York's financial district (FiDi). After 2.5 miles, we made it to the west side of Manhattan, where the sun was setting over New Jersey and next to the Statue of Liberty. The sun was glimmering off the Hudson River and hitting the line of skyscrapers behind us – it was IG-worthy.

This is where things took a turn for the worse. After posting a sunset story for the gram (seen above on Twitter), the unthinkable happened.

As I was putting my phone back into my running sling, I dropped it. In a heroic effort to save it from shattering into a million pieces, I tried to kick it up like I was juggling a soccer ball. Instead of kicking my phone up, I kicked it forward in the direction of the Hudson River. It ricocheted off my foot, hit a pole, and in slow motion, bounced off the pole into the Hudson River. It was improbable, hysterical, and jaw-dropping. The bystanders beside me, enjoying a beautiful NYC sunset, laughed as I stood there looking at the murky gray water, thinking, "did that really just happen?" It did.

Stunned, without a phone and with a little less dignity, Jack and I jogged back to our apartment. On the way back, our pace gradually increased as the reality of the situation set in. After the run, we settled into a workflow high off the five miles we just ran. Jack and I worked for two hours straight, only being interrupted by Facetime calls telling my family that I kicked my phone into the Hudson River.

This is where things took a turn again.

That night, I was supposed to have a date at Arthur's Tavern – a cool bar with jazz on Monday nights in the West Village of NYC. I say "supposed to" because it never happened. Despite not having my cellular device (and Google Maps), I thought I could successfully navigate to my date's apartment, where I was meeting her before Arthur's. It turns out NYC is really big, with many streets and thousands of apartments – who would've thought? I walked up and down the streets of West Village looking for her apartment, but after an hour of wandering, I gave up.

At that point, a significant chunk of my dignity had perished. The last inkling of hope I had was that she may have walked to Arthur's anyway. So, I walked over to the tavern, got my California ID checked for way too long, and entered the bar. I was welcomed by the sweet sound of jazz music and the smell of Whiskey. But after looking around – for probably too long – I didn't see my date. Yikes. In chess, that's called a blunder. And I had two big ones back to back.

Why am I telling you about this historic day in my life? Well, I hope you laughed – or at least chuckled – at my misadventure. Secondly, there's a lesson hidden in disguise. On my coffee walk that Monday morning, I passed a few chalk drawings. They were random chalk circles on the sidewalk with some words in the middle. They read "Bad Luck Spots."

At that moment, I thought, "Wow. That's so lame. Who would believe in such a thing?" I avoided the first two but quickly became fed up and walked straight through the bad luck spots, refusing to believe I would have any bad luck because of some stupid chalk drawings. Oh boy. That day, I learned my lesson; don't walk in the bad luck spots 🙄

After recovering from Monday's series of unfortunate events, I woke up Tuesday with renewed hope. My dignity was slowly getting pieced back together, and I made sure to avoid the – now faded – bad luck spots on my morning coffee walk.

Do I wish I had avoided the bad luck spots? Yes. But I'm not sure that would have changed anything. Sometimes, life throws the unthinkable at you. It doesn't have to be blundering a phone or a date. It can be anything: layoffs, wrong DoorDash deliveries, relationship trouble, lost bags, or freak accidents. When the unthinkable happens – because it will – the goal isn't to make everything right; it's to respond.

My father has taught me a lot about life, but the most important lesson he shared was how to think when adversity hits. When I had a bad game in high school, he didn't lash out in frustration. He'd say, "I can't wait to see how you respond." My father taught me that success, as Winston Churchill said, "is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

He didn't ignore the fact that I went 0-4 with four strikeouts; he recognized that I had a bad game, taught me how to make amends, and showed me how to respond. The only way to fail in baseball is to let yesterday's outcome affect your play today. In life, it's exactly the same; failure is letting yesterday's misgivings affect you today. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel pain, sadness, disappointment, or frustration – that's inhumane. But when the unthinkable does hit (and it will), shifting your focus to your response helps pull you through that discomfort.

How did I respond to Monday's events?

I laughed, wrote this article, made amends with my date, went to class, called my mom and dad, worked out, and ate some ramen for dinner. No superhero stuff, just one foot in front of the other. As my mother likes to say – during times of uncertainty and adversity – "the best course of action is to dive wholeheartedly into what's in front of you." And when you drop-kick your phone into the Hudson River and bomb a date, that's what you do.

Keep crushing.

Cheers,

Noah Cracknell

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