Little Bit o' Luck

For those of you not in New York (or those of you in New York who don't have T.V. and tend to ride the subway with your eyes closed), there has been a recent ad campaign for the New York lottery featuring the freakish-looking man/elf guy to the right. The whole concept is that all you need to win the Take 5 is a foot tall man in a blazer with an oversized head and glasses. Or, as he calls himself, a "Little Bit Of Luck."

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I just landed my first apartment in New York City. And the circumstances that got me here are just about as freakish as our friend here.

Last Wednesday I decided to peruse Craigslist, not really hoping for much. I put a max price on $1,000 and only really responded to ads in neighborhoods that interested me (which left me contacting about five out of 1,734 ads). Anyway, before I even finished searching I received a phone call. It was a woman who had placed one of the ads. She told me to come by on Saturday. I said great.

So Saturday I went out to Brooklyn, scoped the place, it looked great, location was fantastic, chatted with the two people who live there now, and went on my way. I had lunch with a friend and before I had even paid the bill my phone was ringing. It was the people from the apartment telling me that I had won the reality-television-esque challenge of Roommate Real World Williamsburg.

I had a home. I have a home. Well, as of next weekend, I will have a home.

It's felt absolutely surreal for the past few days. I mean, Craigslist is usually a sure-fire way to find weirdos and free hospital beds. Not much else. Well, also this kickass Hello Kitty telephone. But that's it!

Nevertheless, in a matter of four days I went from aimlessly browsing the listings to forking over the security deposit on the type of apartment I could only dream of. And the whole scenario made me realize that people tend to spin yarns about the difficulty, the hardship, the suffering, the commitment, the this, the that, the everything terrible that it takes to successfully move to New York and make it work. And I'm not trying to deny that sometimes, for some people, it can be a pretty crappy ordeal. I mean, I am writing this post within 5 feet of a litter box right now, so I'm not entirely endowed myself.

I guess what I'm getting at, for all of you destined to make this journey in the upcoming weeks and months, is that there is more to the process than simply what you can control -- sometimes that favors you, sometimes it doesn't. But either way, it's a reason to calm down and stay focused on only that which you can control.

Cuz honestly, you don't need that much to make this whole thing work. You need some cash, some good friends, some assemblage of a network, and... Yes, a little bit o' luck.

More of the freakazoid.