As a Rooster, money-making is nothing to crow about

Sometimes, over the course of a long life, divine insight strikes at unlikely moments. It might come in church, on the analyst’s couch or even perched at the bar.

Mine comes from the Far East — China, to be precise.

The realization was this: When it comes to making money, and I mean real money, you know, making bank, I have been a failure.

Eastern wisdom — not to mention my wife — tells me so.

The other night, as we were laying in bed, launched on our own respective Internet journeys, she turned to me with the news both of us have always known.

In a world of haves, I was a have-not. 

There was a video clip of a feng shui master, who explained that when it came to getting rich, the Chinese zodiac sign of the Rooster was the worst thing a man could have.

The Rooster, of course, is my sign.

The explanation comes from long held rural Chinese wisdom. The ancients believed the Rooster was resigned to a life of demanding drudgery, to awaken when the world is still dark, every day without rest, to rear back its head and crow in the arriving dawn.

He is a blue-collar barnyard denizen. 

There’s dirt in his claws. 

Money seems as unattainable as fame itself.

In other words, she said, me.

My wife has watched as I have forged my way as a mostly-penniless freelance writer, half-baked thinker and farmer’s market dealmaker since leaving the demanding 9-to-5 world of daily journalism five years ago.

Every day, I wake up, brew my coffee and report to my home office, like a hamster hopping atop his wheel — always running, spinning, panting, but going nowhere.

It’s a tough job indeed, but someone has to do it.

See, I’ve never been one of those macho guys who thumped his chest and declared in a Cro-Magnon voice, “Breadwinner! Ugh!”

If my girl wants to got out there and make the focaccia, I’m stepping aside, feel me?

And so she does, in her own sweet passive-aggressive little way. 

She’s a bean counter and I hear her on work calls with other bean counters, playing their numbers game. For them, the idea is to make the company money. Statistics and the Principals of Accounting are different books of the Bible.

She’s tough, my wife. And I can say this — because she not only balances my checkbook, she pays for my health insurance.

I have learned my place.

One day, I said, “Let me get this straight, you’re a financial wizard who deals with billion-dollar accounts. I’m a mere feature writer. So why am I the one who writes the checks?

“Because,” she said, sighing, “in the corporation that is our marriage, I’m the chief financial officer and you’re a clerk. And that’s a clerk’s job.”

Alrighty then.

But along with my wife’s ice-scraper business side lurks a spiritual one as well.

She uses her belief system to do good in the world.

Over the years, using playing cards and “the science of love,” she has matched up numerous couples who eventually married.

For awhile, I called her Madam Lily.

Just this morning, she was advising a friend, employing fung shui and common sense to determine whether a move to the East Coast was a wise one.

She has tried to school me on improving my spiritual lot, on finding the path.

One important factor to one’s fate is yi ming, an analysis of the birth date — not just the year, month and day but even the hour. The second is er yun, luck. The third is san feng shui, the energy flow of one’s surroundings. The best scenario is to live behind a mountain and in front of a stream or river.

Good feng shui, she insists, will improve not only my marriage, health and career but my money luck.

But in all of this I am challenged. 

So, what can I do? There are two life-saving paths.

One is to do good in the world — help others and donate, adhere to a moral standard.

The last is reading.

Well, I say smugly, I got that last one down cold.

But my wife puts it all into perspective: Bill Gates gets them all right.

Eastern theories of relativity pervade our house. And who am I to challenge? 

Her culture has been around for 5,000 years. 

Mine? Two-hundred and change. 

When we first met, she had this book with the picture of a chubby-faced Chinese guy on the back. To my wife, he was the man. 

The book broke down every day of the year into three different-colored dots.

Red meant a good day, white was average and black was a disaster.

Black meant you’d miss your connecting flight at the airport, get splashed with mud by a runaway garbage truck, that kind of thing.

One day early on, my wife woke up and said, “Watch out, today’s a black day.”

I told her that I wasn’t even out of bed yet, I did not need to know this.

Sure enough, when I got to the office, some major shit went down.

After that, whenever I faced the work gremlins, I would call her.

“Get the book out,” I’d say. “Today must be a black day.”

And it usually was.

So I am a convert to my wife’s eastern mysticism.

Whenever she begins a sentence with “Master says…” I shut up and listen.

She says getting rich involves making money while you sleep, a trick I have never been able to master. When we recently experienced a backyard leak that resulted in a $400 monthly water bill, I got the point about my money-challenged ways.

“Dear,” I admitted, “I lose money while I sleep.”

Like my Latino gardeners, all fine chaps, my mantra is “Mucho trabajo. Poco dinero.”

So, here I am, on a wonderfully sunny Saturday, when I could be hiking or lounging by the pool, sitting here in my office, doing something I will not be paid for, will not make me famous, something many consider a complete waste of time and energy.

I’m writing my blog.

It’s my own personal hamster wheel.

I run but go nowhere, and yet I am loving every minute of it.

Today must be a red day.