What People Call Luck Is the Work Nobody Saw

If you have ever worked yourself into the ground for something and had someone reduce the whole thing to luck, this story is for you.

When they announced that I had been selected for the Society of Illustrators national student competition, a classmate turned around, looked at me, and said you're so lucky.

She could not see what was actually happening.

She could not see the mornings I was getting up at 4 or 5am to drive to College of San Mateo to sit in Joe Price's advanced rendering class. Joe Price was a teacher who was actually willing to let me develop the way I needed to. My regular school had gaps. Joe did not. So I found him and I showed up. She could not see me sleeping in my car between sessions so I could make it back for my afternoon classes without losing the whole day to the commute. She could not see me doing this over and over because I was hungry for real growth and unwilling to let a frustrating situation determine the ceiling of my development.

She could not see the nights in my tiny room with headphones on. There was a jazz station in San Francisco called KJAZ that played a version of Around Midnight at midnight every night. I would still be working when it came on. I would keep working after it ended. Sometimes I did not go to sleep until dawn.

And she definitely could not see how I actually got my work into that competition.

I walked into the office as a sophomore with my paintings under my arm. They told me I was not upper division. Not ready. Upper class students only. Come back later.

I said nothing. I waited in the hallway until the office emptied out.

Then I walked back in, found the stack of entries piled on the table, and slid my painting underneath the bottom of the entire stack.

They accepted it. I got in. And when I got in the first time, I expected to get in again the next year. Not arrogance. The logical consequence of driving before sunrise and sleeping in my car and working past the jazz station's last song. I was not lucky. I was prepared. And the difference between those two things is every single hour that nobody else could see.

“Luck is what achievement looks like from the outside when you have not been inside the room watching someone work.”

Here is what I know after 25 years of watching artists build careers. The ones who make it are not more gifted than the ones who do not. They are not luckier. They are more willing to do the part that happens in the dark, when no one is watching, for longer than everyone around them thinks is reasonable.

Your next level is not waiting for luck to find you. It is waiting for you to do the work that nobody sees, for as long as it takes, without needing anyone to witness it.

What are you doing when nobody is watching?