In 1982 I’d heard about this new company called Microsoft. I thought it would be an excellent investment. But $50 per share? I was just a kid! (Well, relatively speaking.) I was making minimum wage doing data entry at the air force base, and didn’t have the money to spare.
Beechcraft T-34. My dad, who was in the FAA, told me in the mid-1980s that someone was selling surplus T-34s for $5,000 each. No engines, and they needed some other parts. I told him he should get one, but he said that it would take $50,000 to get it airborne. Back in the '90s I saw one sell at auction for $250,000.
More recently: If I had known that it would take more than two years, and much more than I had intended to spend, to restore my '66 MGB roadster, I would have bought one already-restored. It would have been cheaper, and I would have been driving it these last two years.
If my mom had been a couple of weeks quicker saying that she would buy the house my sister and I inherited, we could have sold it to her and inherited it again.
If I hadn’t gone skiing one time to many, I could have realised my dream of flying jets off of aircraft carriers.
In retrospect, I should have kept my dead-end job and completed college instead of going into a career in computers. I would have had touble living, but I’d be in a better situation now.
I should never have let my career sidetrack my filmmaking.
Right now I should bite the bullet and invest in more flight training. I should get re-trained in fixed-wings and get my Instrument Rating and Commercial Pilot Certificate. Then I should take the test for Commercial Pilot Helicopter and get my Flight Instructor rating. Then I could fly while somebody else paid for the aircraft.
There are lots of other things I would have done differently. I’d not be so naïve in my dealings with people. I would have had more confidence in asking women out. And so much more…