For those who prefer to listen instead of read, a link to the YouTube audio recording is provided at the end of this article.
This is a personal reflection on risk, rejection and the ferocity of becoming….
People love the word luck – it rolls off the tongue so easily, like a sigh of relief or an excuse disguised as admiration. “You’re so lucky,” they say, as though the story ended there—at the surface, at the glittering finish line, at the one moment where Fortuna’s blindfold slipped and her smile, apparently, landed on you by mistake.
But no one calls you lucky when you’re knee-deep in pain, crawling as you face the old demons, hoping to heal them, or at best understand them during your dark night of the soul. No one calls you lucky when you are facing rejection emails, or lying awake at 2:00 a.m., excavating wounds, putting projects together and stitching poems out of the debri of your life. No one calls you lucky when you’re climbing a stone wall like a mischievous child because your spirit insists you must see what lies on the other side. No, luck only gets mentioned when the reward appears—never during the pilgrimage.
The Truth About “Lucky People”…
If someone believes you are constantly lucky, it’s usually because they haven’t watched you bleed or perhaps because they are afraid to say out loud that they hope you fail…
They didn’t witness the nights you felt your soul peeling under the heat of criticism. They didn’t see you swallow frustration as though it were a vitamin and face humiliation. They didn’t hear the creaking of your heart when another gallery sighed, “Not for the lower mainland…too much” or when a publisher gently tried to hand your poetry back as if it were a volatile chemical because they felt it was too passionate for the lower mainland.
They see outcomes, not the exquisite chaos that produced them.
But the free spirit feels the entire anatomy of rejection, and instead of crumbling, we metabolize it, transmuting it into work, into vision, into audacity.
The “Dangerous” Artist and the Insanity of Becoming go hand in hand. The free spirited artist, I think, is always a little dangerous—if only because we refuse to behave. We trespass expectations, traditions, fences, and occasionally private properties. We are a menace to boundaries, a tender rebellion wrapped in skin….
Take, for example, the exquisite colonial house— which turn into a private small museum, overlooking the ocean….owned by a well-known respected worldwide artist. A respectable place. A place with locks. A place that any normal person would simply admire from the sidewalk…specially if you are just visiting that particular country.
But the artist’s brain does not operate on “normal”…
It said: Climb the wall….
So, naturally, I did.
Bushes scratched my legs, the ocean muttered below, and poor Barry—had zero idea he was an accomplice to a minor artistic crime spree. By the time we landed on the forbidden side, a dog announced our presence and a security guard materialized like a mythic guardian. His eyes darted from Barry (utter confusion), to me (utter madness), to my last name (utter transformation). Something softened. Perhaps he recognized the species: artistus lunaticus.
He smiled. He listened. And instead of escorting us back over the wall, he gave a tour and the owner’s contact. And just like that—Bingo—I had found the path to the space my art longed to inhabit. I contacted the owner. Ater weeks I got a call back – i had pretty much given up…
He happened to have been traveling. He had heard of the incident, and was chuckling. He asked to see some of the work, and the project’s focus, and when he reached back again, he said…2026 sounds good to you? – it sounds perfect I replied.
Was that luck?…
Or was it a combination of intuition, insanity, audacity, and the strangely universal phenomenon wherein security guards assume petite artists are harmless creatures?
There is the time I Crushed a Party I Was Never Invited To…
It happened almost a year ago because I decided that on 2026 i wanted to shift my shadow work to work exclusively with high-end executives, to merge art with German psychology like some sort of elegant intellectual alchemy….I used to deal with executives in the past, so I needed to cultivate those relationships again.
I had no invitation, but I had nerve. And a name provided by a dear friend and old mentor, from the corporate headquarters at which I used to work years ago.
So I walked right into an invitation-only executive party, bypassing the invisible velvet rope with the ease of someone guided by destiny or delusion—likely both. By the time the host discovered my uninvited presence, he was already engaged in conversation with me, already amused, already invested in the curious creature who dared to enter his world unannounced. And from this transgression? A new era of my practice is being born—one built entirely on referral only.
Luck? Hardly.
It was risk. Shameless faith. And perhaps a little cosmic applause for courage.
There are so many little moments I could mention—honestly, looking back, I think Fortuna or Lady Luck has winked at me more than once. But let’s be honest: she only flutters her eyelashes at me because I’m one very stubborn human being. I don’t wait for doors to open; I rattle them until someone on the other side gives in.
Take, for example, the time I decided—on a random Tuesday evening, mind you—to message one of the main contributors of Ancient Aliens. Yes, yes, mock me all you want, but I am a full-blown, unapologetic nerd of many subjects, including unique theories. I love learning. I love exploring. I love poking at life the way a kid pokes at jellyfish on the shore: curious, slightly reckless, and fully aware I might be stung… yet continuing anyway.
So after watching an episode, I got this spark—classic me—and thought, I should ask him about something I saw on my travels. Barry looked at me like I had just announced I was going to message the Queen about her skincare routine.
“How on earth are you going to get his contact info?”
“Persistence,” I said, as if that explained everything—which, in my life, it usually does.
Long story short? I got the contact. I reached out. And he replied. Not only was he generous with his time, but we ended up having conversations deeper than a late-night philosopher’s pit of despair. And somewhere in between ancient ruins, cosmic theories, and my ridiculous curiosity, I realized I wasn’t just asking questions—I was giving him new ones. A mutual exchange of wonder. A dance of perspectives.
Then there was the time I reached out to a very well-renowned poet. Everyone around me did the concerned eyebrow raise.
“He’s never going to respond.”
But he did. Poets recognize other wild poets I suppose. His advice still sits in my pocket like a smooth stone—quiet, grounding, and always there when needed.
And of course—my personal favorite—the day Barry, and I were driving back from a fishing resort. A peaceful, sun-warm drive, me singing badly but enthusiastically, my hands surfing the wind out the open window. Suddenly Barry stopped the truck.
“That would be an amazing photo,” he said.
I followed his gaze and there it was—a massive, beautiful bull, carved straight out of the kind of mythology people whisper about. And in a moment that only makes sense to me and possibly the bull, I felt this razor-focused need to get closer. Maybe it was nostalgia for the times I rode bulls for fun—because yes, I do things most sane humans actively avoid. But the things they find normal? Those tend to bore me or i am afraid of them…weird I know.
So I did what any questionably reasonable person with a passionate heart would do: I walked right toward the bull.
He stared at me in utter confusion. Imagine looking at a petite, determined woman who seems to have misplaced all common sense—it must have been surreal for him. The bull finally decided he was the one in danger and made a shaky escape over a fence. Only once he reached the other side did he turn back and stare at me—those big, bewildered eyes. Close enough to feel, not close enough to touch. And somehow that made sense. He reminded me of my own spirit—wild but sacred, untamable but tender.
The photo I took wasn’t perfect—my phone isn’t Barry’s fancy camera nor do i have his skill for certain things—but passion makes up for what skill sometimes lacks.
Barry walked up to me afterward, equal parts horrified and impressed.
“You crazy lady… beautiful and crazy,” he said.
And honestly? Maybe that’s exactly what it takes—to be a little mad. To live with enough spark that other people feel more alive just standing beside you. As we drove away, I didn’t hear judgment in his voice. I saw something else entirely. His eyes were glowing.
And isn’t that all we really want?
To feel alive…if only for a moment.
So Rejection can be a Forge, Not a Sentence…
Because look at all the rejections I had to face… The galleries that found my work too intense, too strange, too raw for the lower mainland? Each “no” was a push—outward, upward, into the arms of international artists and gallery owners whose spirits pulsed at the same frequency as mine. Had I wilted, had I softened myself into something easier to swallow, those connections would have evaporated before forming.
Now, i get calls come from gallery owners—gentle, patient voices inviting me into rooms I once had to break into sideways. They speak of openings, collaborations, commissions. They speak as though this was always inevitable, as though I was destined for these conversations….
I am not famous; far far from it…I remain the struggling artist – but I am growing and I love being challenged by people who value me. And I remember when none of this was inevitable. When I was simply gunning it through the yellows of my artistic life, like the philosopher Bernard Williams’s moral gambler, trusting my foot on the pedal more than any promise of the road ahead.
Maybe that’s why Adam Gopnik’s idea of the modern artist rings in my bones—the artist as rule-breaker, boundary-trespasser, norm-shatterer. The descendant of Gauguin’s beachside abandon, Picasso’s unruly storms, dahli’s beautiful madness and every creator who flattened the red lights of tradition in pursuit of something more necessary than approval. I’m no Gauguin, nor Picasso, but I recognize the instinct. The restlessness. The refusal to wait for permission….
And yes—I suppose I’ve always been a little like that. A lifelong speeder. Someone who jaywalks across the polite geometry of the world because the poem, or the photograph, or the idea is glowing just out of reach and I can’t bear to miss it. Making a career of asking uncomfortable questions, of pressing my shoulder against the closed doors of convention, of breaking rules I’m certain were built to be broken. And I’ve watched, again and again, as people mistake the aftermath for luck.
The truth is simpler: I have just kept moving. Kept gunning it. Kept disobeying the version of the world that insists artists must tiptoe.
So if you insist on calling me lucky, then at least call it by its proper name. Call it the luck that Dickinson wrote about—the kind earned in scraped knees and sleepless nights, in risks that leave you breathless, in choices that tug you toward the version of yourself you are brave enough to become:
Luck is not chance—
It’s Toil—
Fortune’s expensive smile
Is earned—
And perhaps that is the real ferocity of becoming: not the audacity to break rules, or the nerve to climb walls, or the willingness to walk into rooms where you were never invited—but the quiet, relentless refusal to stop. The understanding that luck is not a visitor but a companion you build, one impossible step at a time.
If I am being lucky now, it is only because I stayed long enough in the wilderness to meet her….and I hope you learn to do the same. After all, this life is all we got…and as someone reminded me when I found myself waiting…”Sofia, life waits for no one”, and I am so glad that soul came into my life to remind me of such lesson…
May you also remember that life is but fleeting moments, some deeply painful, some beautiful and exhilarating – through it all, life is this beautiful chaotic dance….embrace it.
Eiros 