Is life a matter of luck?

If you've met me you're probably heard about my luck.  I say in honesty and with humor that if it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. Take a breath before we move on.  You might fall into group A: those who think I'm a horrible pessimist and immediately try to convince me otherwise. Group B are those folks who just flat out don't believe I have bad luck.

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I to refer to my luck with tongue planted firmly in cheek. I use the work 'luck' to refer to the huge number of bizarre things that tend to happen to me than I also don't particularly see happening to others. A great example from two weeks ago was a taxi ride.  I'd jumped in the taxi about 12 seconds before it started raining.  That meant my normally 8 minute taxi ride was 20, still not bad and only about 20,000Rp. In that twenty minutes the taxi I was in was hit not once but twice.  Once hit in the rear driver side door and then again from behind.  They were fairly minor, the bus causing a bit of damage to the car.  The taxi driver and I had a good laugh about it, lots of "really?" and head shaking. It adds to the story of my life with question marks and exclamation points.

Maybe what I call luck is what others call fate.  To find someone (i.e. boyfriend, girlfriend) it has to be the right person AND the right time. I prefer to think of it as luck rather than fate since fate sounds like I no longer have a choice in the matter, like it's been decided already. Are the ideas, at least my versions, really so different?  Don't we all sort of make our own definitions of fate and luck, and decide how much we give credence to any of it?

I'm not a pessimist.  I'm a realist.  If there is 'luck' then I'm definitely not blessed with it (I chuckle as I write this).  My nickname in Spain with 'death' and I was deemed to have a bad luck angel, or BLA, that follows me.  I've been trying to reconcile this recently with the giant abacus idea.  I use this as opposed to karma because it's a less religious idea.   If there is a giant abacus, then is there a point when the minuses, the bad luck adds up on one side and there must be a showering of good luck to even things out, right? Life is about balance. too many lions and all the deer disappear.  Too many deer  and the grass disappears.  Too much bad luck and Melissa goes crazy?  If there is an abacus, then I'm wracking up lots of bad now for the good later.  In this vein I wonder if there is often a much faster trade of good for bad luck.  I had my phone stolen last Friday, but had a fantastic weekend with new people.  Maybe it was one for the other.  

AGAIN, I'm not serious about this, don't lecture me about being negative because I'm not.  Its more of a fun theoretical/mental exercise.

P.S. Bad luck?  I thought I had ants in my room and one bit me.  I realized they are actually baby scorpions and I got stung. "LUCKY" for me their tiny!