Being a Nail

Some of you are no doubt familiar with this line from an old folk song, "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail."  And that would be my preference too.  But just now, I seem to be the nail. It has been one thing after another for months and I've lost track of when it started but I've had nothing but bad luck and have been a victim of circumstance for a long time now.

Some highlights include:

• Unexpected repairs to the house as a result of a bad winter
• My dog gets lyme disease and dies
• My other dog gets a cancerous tumor and must have surgery
• My wife and I both get sick, requiring antibiotics

And the only bright spot in all this has been my novel being accepted by my publisher.  But given my streak of luck maybe that was bad luck too.  Maybe the book will not sell.

I keeping hoping that I'm about to turn a corner but that hasn't happened yet and I'm not sure that it will.

Life is hard and people suffer -- much worse that I have -- and the only reason for the suffering seems to be to remind everyone that we need to be compassionate toward each other.

That's hard to do when misfortunate and bad luck are only a few steps behind you. Compassion, like so many other things, requires having money more often than not.  And I, for one, don't have nickel to spare because all this bad luck has cost me thousands of dollars to deal with.

But I'm going to dust myself off and keep going and hope -- pray -- that life is done treating me like a nail.