you may be right, I may be crazy

"Maybe I win the lottery."
I couldn't get that kid's vague dream out of my mind, though it's a long time since we had that conversation.
And the idea of "winning the lottery" surfaced again recently, and I want to write about what's bugging me.
-------------First, a disclaimer, or clearing-up statement.
I am not critical of "the lottery" or of anyone who buys tickets or wins it or anything else.
Here's the only thing -- it's bothering me, that people --
"people" in General
seem to think,
these days,
that
the only way financial security and some wealth can be achieved is if they --
Win
The
Lottery.

Recently I was in a conversation with someone and when I mentioned my goal / project of finishing writing my book and hoping to get it published and to make an excellent living As A Writer, he said, "Yes, like if you won the lottery."
AND THEN --
believe it or not, a couple of months later -- last week -- I had a conversation with another person, and when he asked me what I was doing, I told him about my current full-time job and also my writing, and my goal / project of getting published, and HE said -- (guess!) --
"Oh, you want to win the lottery."
[slightly exasperated silence]
Two things:
1. Writing a book that is good enough to get published and good enough to sell a lot (and hopefully film rights as well) is not the same thing as winning the lottery.
Winning the lottery is sheer luck. (Nothing wrong with that.)
Writing a book that sells a lot (when you aren't yourself a celebrity of any kind) is not luck. That is applying your passion and enthusiasm, working hard, and achieving something.
Achieving success is achieving success. It isn't luck.

(Now, it can be argued that you're lucky if you get a publisher -- yes, yes, no Argument there -- any kind of success takes some of what many people call "luck" -- [heck, we could make the argument that if a person got through a day alive, he was "lucky.")]
But -- I don't deal in luck. That's too fuzzy of a thing.

The fact remains, in my world (head) that
winning the lottery is a good thing -- fine. That's Luck.
Achieving Success through one's efforts is also a good thing -- and that's Doing Something.
Creating Something and then applying persistence until the Thing you Created garners the Success you want. (I'm getting lost in my own words, here -- help! 911!)
--------------------
Luck is fine.
Creating / Doing Something and finding a way to sell it (or someone who will sell it for you) --
or -- (lost in forest of ideas again) -- not so much sell it, but rather --
OFFER
it, and then if People are entertained and enticed, they buy it, and I Make Money. And THAT, I'm trying to say, is Not "LUCK." That's different from Luck. That is NOT "Winning The Lottery." That IS -- achieving something.
-------------------------------
And -- here's the thing that makes me feel -- bothered, ill-at-ease, like -- Something's Not Right.
I am not personally offended or bummed out in any way if someone -- anyone -- likens my Best-Selling Books goal to Winning The Lottery.
They were just trying to relate to what I told them -- they didn't hurt my feelings or anything, at all --
What seems "off," to me is that --
three people --
the young guy who is just starting out who had no vision for Success except "win the lottery,"
and also
the two guys in the recent conversations --
all Three of them seemed to be operating on an assumption that the
Way to Have Financial Security and Wealth
was to -- WIN THE LOTTERY.
-------------------
It's the apparent prevalence of the "win-lottery" concept that I find disturbing.
Disturbing because if People (who? everyone except me?) believe that the only way to achieve financial security is to win the lottery, then they *DON'T* believe that most of us can achieve it through "working hard."
That bothers me because of 2 reasons:
1) That reverses the Belief System my Whole Life is based on, as an American, and as a human;
and
2) (for the first time in my life, I'm worried that -- they might be right) .

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