Winning the Lottery

Currently, in the state of California, the lottery jackpot is worth $500 million dollars. I am not a lottery-player very often but when jackpots get this big, you can't help but want to join in and play the odds (which are like 1:175 million or something ridiculous like that). When I used to commute between LA and Orange County, I would pass a billboard every night that would post the current jackpot amounts and I would pass the time on the slow crawl up I-5 planning what I would do with that money if I won. It was a great game that always made my drive a little less horrible. 


Listening to the radio this morning on my much-shorter-now commute, they were talking about the current jackpot which is huge - $500 million dollars. The take home pay is roughly $350 million.. but still, more money than most of us can even fathom.I find myself, once again, day dreaming about all of the things I would/could/should do with that kind of money; I am always so sensible when I play that game in my head. 


First, I would pay off our bills - truck & car payments, student loans, etc. I would write Sallie Mae a check with a big smiley face on it and say - good bye, forever.  And then the normal things... buy a new house, new cars, new furniture.. and pay for it in cash. And then I would take my entire family and my husbands entire family on a vacation somewhere fun. Followed promptly by a vacation for just me and my husband in order to recuperate from the previous vacation! And after squirreling a bunch of money away so we could live and retire and send our kids to college, etc I would become what I have always wanted to be... a Philanthropist. 


But I digress... 


I read something in another blog the other day that resonated with the author... and has started to resonate with me: You can have the life you want.It is such a simple statement but yet, really powerful at the same time. I used to believe that I just needed  a certain amount of money to be able to really achieve the things I wanted but maybe it's not about money and more about willingness and drive and reckless abandon. After all, how many movies do you see made about people that achieved something because they had the money to do it... boring! No! It's about people fighting the odds, defying gravity, sticking it to the man... 

So I may still buy a lottery ticket and try my chances at $500 million dollars... but let's not wait for the winning ticket to go after the things we want!


Woo Hoo!