Agree. You can have all the skills in the world, but sometimes you need fate (or whatever you want to call it) to fall in your favour.
A small example, not related to this, but when I started DJing about 15 years ago, I put on a party that was a warm-up party for a bigger night. I told John Digweed (who was running the bigger party) about it. John Digweed was one of the worlds biggest DJs at that point, and as 'luck' would have it he was releasing a new mix CD. So the world's music press was there to interview him.
He came down to my party with the world's press and suddenly my first ever party was in magazines across the globe. I started getting offers of gigs all over the world after that. There were much better DJs around (I was pretty average back then), but I'd had the stroke of luck which ended up in a pretty successful 'career' (I put it in quotes because I always treated it as a hobby, but by most people's measurements it was pretty successful).
Knowledge and skill is obviously important, but luck definitely plays a role, especially when it comes to areas of life that very few succeed in.
"You make your own luck." There were a sequence of events that lead to you getting the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time.
Random luck happens for sure, but how did you get to put on a warm-up for one of the biggest DJs in the world? I'd guess because of some conscious work you did, not because he picked a phone number in the book at random.
You told him about your party after getting the gig. He probably wouldn't have gone if you had not. That kind of networking and effort is a skill just as much as selecting the right music.
I did it independently in a different venue around the corner from the main night. I saw it as a courtesy to tell him what I was doing, and the rest is history. Clearly I had to spend time learning how to DJ, buying the right records, promoting it, etc. So there was definitely an aspect of making my own luck, but that is also what many wannabe DJs do without success.
Meh. This is just a silly semantics game. I think it's very wise and empathetic to just accept that sometimes you just get lucky, instead of trying to coop credit for it by saying "well I put the effort to be there to receive that luck in the first place!".
Comments
Agree. You can have all the skills in the world, but sometimes you need fate (or whatever you want to call it) to fall in your favour.
A small example, not related to this, but when I started DJing about 15 years ago, I put on a party that was a warm-up party for a bigger night. I told John Digweed (who was running the bigger party) about it. John Digweed was one of the worlds biggest DJs at that point, and as 'luck' would have it he was releasing a new mix CD. So the world's music press was there to interview him.
He came down to my party with the world's press and suddenly my first ever party was in magazines across the globe. I started getting offers of gigs all over the world after that. There were much better DJs around (I was pretty average back then), but I'd had the stroke of luck which ended up in a pretty successful 'career' (I put it in quotes because I always treated it as a hobby, but by most people's measurements it was pretty successful).
Knowledge and skill is obviously important, but luck definitely plays a role, especially when it comes to areas of life that very few succeed in.
"You make your own luck." There were a sequence of events that lead to you getting the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time.
Random luck happens for sure, but how did you get to put on a warm-up for one of the biggest DJs in the world? I'd guess because of some conscious work you did, not because he picked a phone number in the book at random.
You told him about your party after getting the gig. He probably wouldn't have gone if you had not. That kind of networking and effort is a skill just as much as selecting the right music.
I did it independently in a different venue around the corner from the main night. I saw it as a courtesy to tell him what I was doing, and the rest is history. Clearly I had to spend time learning how to DJ, buying the right records, promoting it, etc. So there was definitely an aspect of making my own luck, but that is also what many wannabe DJs do without success.
Meh. This is just a silly semantics game. I think it's very wise and empathetic to just accept that sometimes you just get lucky, instead of trying to coop credit for it by saying "well I put the effort to be there to receive that luck in the first place!".