My Year of Being Lucky

Chapter I

              I don’t really believe in luck. It is possible though to find oneself fortunately attuned to the best possible outcomes. Often, despite what we expect for ourselves.

In 1999, the slipstream of a generous universe swept me up in its flow, and everything I touched – or even thought of touching – turned to gold. Perhaps the alchemy of some earlier karma touched my shoulder, and everything I had given up and given up on to that point began to return to me polished, renewed, and saturated with ease.

Although there were hints leading up to this windfall, I didn’t know how to categorize them as anything but coincidences. For twelve years, I had let go of all my worldly possessions to pursue a monastic practice in Zen Buddhism until my natural wanderlust and curiosity grabbed the steering wheel of my zealous pursuit of self-knowledge, and I sabotaged my hard-won inner sense of peace by declaring I couldn’t take it anymore.

Broke, alone, and relentlessly sloughing off old acquaintances, I took a job at Starbucks as a shift supervisor for $16 dollars an hour. That was a decent amount at the time for someone who had been virtually unemployed for over eight years, living on the modest stipend provided at San Francisco Zen Center along with room and board. When I formally left what was called “the practice”, my fellow monks performed a ritual known as the Exit Ceremony, where my teacher blessed me and announced, “Cassandra will now leave us to return to the Market Place with gift-bestowing hands.”

That touched me. I had second thoughts. But only for a moment.

Since I had no car or money for a bus pass, for my first month on the new job, I had to walk the two miles from my apartment at Page and Laguna Streets through the dicey streets of the Tenderloin district at four o’clock in the morning. My job was to open the Starbucks in the Financial District on Montgomery Street, six blocks above Market Street. This route meant I passed by the headquarters of Charles Schwab, Inc. The red brick building had a covered walkway that made me feel safe for that block, and I would usually stop and peer in the window to the lobby, where a poster on an easel had a picture of the Founder Charles himself, smiling fatherly at me over a statement of guiding principles his thriving workforce could read each day.

I read them as well. They resonated with this wayward monk, and I vowed to myself, over and over again, that I would one day work for this guy. This was the summer of 1997, and I had no idea that this vow would soon come true.

Some of you may remember that the so-called Y2K crisis began to seep into the zeitgeist around then. Since in my pre-Buddhist life I had worked for many years on Mainframe Computers, and although I had been quite skilled and successful, after eight years those skills were very much out of date.

This is where things take an unlikely turn, as if the Universe had its giant eye all over my business and decided for some reason to make use of me. Few people really understood at the time how very serious the Y2K threat really was. But I knew. The whole world of computing, so deeply embedded in the world’s economy by then, was about to go through a kind of revision of all software and equipment that seemed impossible to pull off at the time. There was no choice, however, so big banks, insurance companies, and virtually every industry were sufficiently panicked that they were willing to go to any lengths to avoid the impending doom. If you think I am exaggerating, you didn’t live through it the way I did. But I’m getting ahead of the story…

After six months at Starbucks, I saw the opportunity to return to my former field in computers as almost an inevitability. Reading the Sunday job ads in the newspapers (remember those?), it became clear that the panic was so deep and my skills, as out of date as they were, still met the need. After updating an old resume, retaining my integrity throughout, I decided to let the chips fall where they may. If I was questioned about the eight-year gap, I would simply tell the truth, as weird as it sounded at the time.

Turns out no one cared. All they saw was the long list of skills I used to be proud of and before I knew it, three different companies were courting me like I was a prima dona. I turned down the most lucrative one because it felt too close to the work that once nearly killed me. Instead, I took a job for a small software company in Burlingame, California, near the airport. I chose them mainly because I was familiar with their flagship product: ChangeMan.

Yes, Changeman. In a future post, I may wax poetic on the significance of that name.

I loved working in Burlingame, but it was quite a distance from downtown San Francisco, and I still could not afford a car. Nor a bus pass for that matter. At least until I got my first paycheck.

Unfortunately, I only had enough in my bank account to cover the first week’s commute (by train, the only practical option for $7.00 round trip), However, I would not get paid until the following Monday. By Friday I was frantic, not able to bring myself to borrow money from anyone. Did I mention I was alone?

Friday afternoon, I took a break and went outside to ponder my options. That is when the first miracle happened. Standing on the landing outside the office, I may have said a little prayer. Ok, I definitely said a prayer. I was desperate. Then I looked down at the juniper bushes below me – was that a dollar bill in those bushes?

I rushed down to grab it as the wind rose up and buffeted the bill further back. Junipers can be a bit scratchy, but I plowed through them unphased. Even though it was only a dollar, it gave me hope. When I reached it and picked it up, I discovered it was not a one-dollar bill.

It was a twenty.

Next: Things ramp up.