Maybe all the beautiful and amazing things that have happened to me in my life are the benevolent workings of some omnipotent creator.  Or maybe I’m just a lucky bastard. Maybe its Karma, or maybe it’s just random chance, but either way, I feel like a lucky bastard, and I sure do love my life.

My belief system is always in flux, but I do believe that all the positive thoughts and actions that I send out into the universe really do come back to me in life. My Karma, or whatever you want to call it, has been working overtime the last couple of weeks.

One day at work, I found a broken beaded necklace on the sidewalk in front of the store.  I tied the remaining beads around my wrist and decided that it would bring me luck.  Anyway, I’d been feeling down the last few days, I had just been practically homeless and now I was crashing on the couch at Robin and Marcel’s place.  Not enough sleep, 4 people living in a one-room studio apartment, and two weeks of really bad weather had taken its toll on my psyche.  I needed some luck.  So I made it for myself with that bracelet I’d found– I do things like that sometimes because I’m like 50 percent gypsy, so I can.

Anyway, the buckets of rainfall slowed to a trickle and good luck and sunshine began to pour into my life once again.

It was Lunch time and I was hungry, but working alone and I couldn’t leave the shop.  Canadian Sean came in to use the internet (I never charged him for it), and as he was about to leave, he said, “Hey bro.” He always seasoned and spiced his sentences with a couple of bros, but he pronounced the word rather strangely with in the South African Style that made sound more like brew. He said, “Hey Brew, I’m not gonna finish this, you want half a pizza?  Its Hawaiian.”  Of course I wanted it. And it was freakin’ delicious.

A friendly Australian guy came in to the shop a few days later and we got to chatting. He stayed until closing and we parted ways affably.  The next morning, hung over and tired from the previous nights exploits, I was sitting in the office, bleary eyed and dreaming of coffee, when my new Aussie friend from the night before came in and brought me a large latte for no reason other than that he was a nice guy.  Cheers mate.

It was the last day of the Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival and I got an email from Taylor Greenwood, an old friend and ex-lover from my old life in Los Angeles.  Taylor is a musician (and a talented one – check her out) and it turns out that her friends Carney were playing  at Blues Fest.  She’d asked for my Aussie mobile number so she could put the band in touch with me.  A few hours later I got a call from one of the guys who said there was a ticket with my name on it waiting for me at will call.  I had to work most of the day, but got to the festival just in time to catch the end of Blues Traveler, as well as sets by Missy Higgins, Jason Mraz, and Ben Harper’s new band Rentless 7.  Awesome show, and thanks again to Taylor and the guys from Carney, I’ll come catch your shows for sure when I get back to LA.

I was just going to start looking for a place for me and Lou to stay when I got a call from Anna and the Swedes, who had found an awesome house for all of us to live in for a couple weeks, fully furnished, 1 block from town, across from the beach, and at a great price. Back in the good life.

All these awesome and lucky things, some little, some big, some random, some fated, some earned.  I always have to remind myself to be thankful of the strange and wonderful things that I experience, in addition to the sad and the difficult things that put the positive into perspective.

The last few weeks at work, I’ve been working with some of the providers we sell tours for and they’ve agreed to send me on a couple trips for free, or at seriously discounted rates.  So now, I’ve taken two weeks off work and I’m headed up the Coast with Robin and the Swedes.  We are all cruising up to Hervey Bay to spend a couple nights on Fraser Island, then to Airlie Beach to sail the Whitsunday Islands and scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef.
The trip will end with me saying goodbye to the Swedes who are heading North to find work, and goodbye to Robin who is flying from Brisbane to Indonesia to catch some Bali waves.  Having just said goodbye to Courtney and Lou, my oldest friends in this part of the world (I met them both almost a year and a half ago in Nelson, NZ), so now leaving Robin – who I’ve been friends with for something like  7 months –  and the Swedes who have been a major part of my life in Byron Bay, its going to be a lonesome return to work in Byron.

As travelers, we are supposed to be used to this kind of attachments and detachment.  It becomes routine for us.  With short-term friendships and relationships, it is usually easy for me to say goodbye.  But in this case, these are real friends, really connections that I’m sad to break.  I’ll miss the lunacy of Courtney and Lou and the real friendship of Robin.  I’ll miss the Swedes and their honest kindness and fun, silly times. And I’ll miss all of these people together, and the place that we all called home will be different without them.

But my travels are coming to an end as well.  After this trip up the cost, I’ll just have a couple more weeks in Byron before flying back to Califronia to spend the summer back home with friends and family.

So, as Fortuna’s Wheel turns, I’ve rotated  along with it, enjoyed  the view from the top and being helped by friends as I wallowed near the bottom.  But now that I’m seeing some close friends take off in new directions, and thinking of new directions myself, I’m wondering where the next spin of the wheel will take me…