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“I feel so lucky to be here with you,” I told my then-boyfriend as our waiter, donning a karate belt and headband, wrapped up a “disappearing chopstick” trick at our table at Ninja Castle. “I never use the word luck because no such thing exists,” my BF told me. “Luck is just when preparation meets opportunity.” In awe over the rose that suddenly appeared out of smoke on our dessert plate, he was clearly a believer of ninja magic – though he apparently did not believe in “luck”. Little did I know that his “preparation meets opportunity” mantra would be repeated so often throughout our long relationship that I gradually conditioned myself to also avoid the luck word entirely. (It was when I realized I also began avoiding another L-word a couple years later that we were doomed.) Flash-forward to this past week, which I spent with Nana Roza, my […]

“I know it sounds crazy, but this is really important. You have less than 24 hours. Can you make it happen?” It was my second week at my new job. I was 21, a shiny new grad anxious to please my boss. But this was insane. On the day before the grand opening of my boss’s namesake academy in south Atlanta, my boss told me I had to find a painting of a scary old woman mounted in an antique, ornate gold frame. It needed to be just the right size to fit in the space above the fireplace in the library next to the special hidden bookcase entrance to the main classroom. (Yes, this was a very special school.) There would be hundreds of people walking through the school that day, including the new students, staff, important donors and members of the media.  As Special Assistant to a public […]