A Streak of Bad Luck

Unlucker dog. I was recently driving on the bridge that connects UW to downtown Seattle on my way to a volleyball game. Traffic was heavy and I had just passed the last exit before the bridge. As I sat in traffic at the start of the bridge, I noticed my tire pressure dropping from the usual 33psi to 26psi. Ok slightly concerning.

Ten seconds later, it plummeted to 22 psi. Within a minute, it’s at 0 psi. You can’t (legally) pull over while on a bridge, so I’m just nervously driving on a completely flat tire, which if you don’t know, is really bad for your car’s health. I manage to pull over after an agonizing crawl and after a few hours and multiple calls to roadside assistance, I was enjoying a tow truck joyride.

Literally, the next day, a car headlight decided to call it quits. Then, a a week later, I discovered a nail in another tire. And just then I thought it couldn’t get worse, the engine decided to completely die. It picked up rod knock, rendering the car useless and stuck in limp mode.

Apparently, there’s a superstition that your zodiac year brings bad luck. I’m never a big believer of such things. Yet, all of those car problems occurred in a 3 week span from 1/18/24 - 2/5/24, coinciding with the year of the rabbit. If you hadn’t guess already, that’s my zodiac year.

Sigh. Such is life I guess.

Time Turns Tragedy into Comedy

After venting out my initial frustrations and going through the hassle fixing all of these issues, I’ve come to appreciate the silver linings.

While I wouldn’t wish this streak of bad luck on anyone, strangely enough, I wouldn’t take back these events if I could. Maybe delulu is the solulu. Call it copium. I don’t know, but I truly believe this has been a valuable experience.

Life is full of random events beyond our control, and it’s unrealistic to expect to sail through without encountering setbacks. Dealing with uncertainties in life is scary, but inevitable. Working through everything, even as the challenges keep piling up, just reaffirms that ultimately, everything will be okay. However, you can’t internalize that until you weather a storm of unlucky events and come out ok.

I’m laughing now, but when I was sitting on the bridge realizing I had a flat, I was thinking the world was going to end. Okay, maybe not that drastic, but I definitely had that sinking feeling sit with me longer than I’d like to admit. Never having experienced something like this before was jarring and, quite frankly, scared me.

If the current me was sitting in the car, I’d be like, “Aww, a flat sucks, but we can get everything fixed. Let me put some country on the radio or something while I wait for roadside assistance.” But you can’t grasp that perspective until you’ve made it through some tough times previously and know that things have a tendency to work out. IYKYK.

I also consider myself fortunate. It’s easy to completely focus on the negatives, but being able to recognize the positives helps put things in perspective. Despite the car troubles, I’m grateful they didn’t result in an accident or cause any injuries. Moreover, in the big picture, these problems are still relatively minor. A car problem here and there (or in my case, multiple car problems) is honestly quite expected and nothing in terms of severity compared to what other problems are out there.

And hey, at least I’ll have a good story to tell once it’s all said and done.¹

With the year of the rabbit now behind me as of a week and half a go, here’s to hoping for better luck in the next 11 years ahead.

1. I might also have a $12k quote to fix the broken engine though . ↩