To explain, what’s a small change that would have drastically changed your life? I need to think about mine more-probably if my father had been around more ( he wasn’t neglectful, he just worked a lot and traveled) I’d be a very different person. Perhaps that’s a bad example…
Ugh, way too many. It would depend at what point the time machine dropped me off.
If my mom hadn’t married that bad guy…if I had taken school seriously…if I had had better self esteem…if I hadn’t had kids…if I hadn’t married that bad guy…
Instead of thinking about those heavy issues, I like to think about the time the dog rescue lady asked us if we wanted a couple of miniature donkeys. I’m still kicking myself for saying no.
ISWYDT
If I hadn’t met a particular and wonderful young woman while we were both on a semester abroad in London in Fall 1985, my life would have gone in a very different direction. We celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary last month.
I shoulda taken that call while sitting in the library courtyard.
You know how when you’re a kid your mom and dad sit you down and tell you that you’re going to have a new baby brother or sister? I heard that three, possibly four times (the first time I’d of been just shy of 2, so I don’t know if they’d told me).
I have one brother.
Now and again I find myself wondering what it would have been like to grow up the oldest of five, not two, if my mom hadn’t had three miscarriages.
It’d of made huge changes to my brother and my’s lives, especially now that our parents are gone a couple decades sooner than most people’s parents. Maybe it’d be good changes, but also maybe bad if the youngest two who’d of been after lil bro were miscarried because they weren’t genetically normal due to medications mom took while not trying to get pregnant (the first baby was lost due to mom having a bad fall, unfortunately, and not a surprise AFAIK).
We’d obviously prefer three normal siblings, but really, who knows how it’d of gone?
As is fairly typical, I went to college right after high school. But I discovered pretty fast that I hated it. I’d been working part time at my dad’s office for about 3 years at that point, and I seriously considered getting a full-time job there. I didn’t particularly love the work - it was a foreign freight forwarding company, so stuff like customs paperwork and ensuring deliveries went to the correct ships.
Anyway, I knew any girl being hired with zero experience would be starting at $95/week (this was in the early 70s.) I figured with 3 years of part-time experience, I was worth $100/week - I already knew how to run the switchboard and most of the office machines. I knew the filing system and I’d done some courier duties, delivering and picking up documents. I couldn’t type for crap, but I knew I could learn. I don’t think it was unreasonable for me to expect the extra $5/week.
But my dad said no. Bless him for that. I got pissed off, then talked to a recruiter, and in August of 1973, I left for Navy recruit training. That led to a career in and with the Navy that spanned over 40 years and allowed me to live in a lot of places and do a lot of things I’d never have tried had I stayed at Dad’s office.
I can’t even imagine what would have happened had he agreed to the pay I asked for.
at least 5 times a day I wonder with regret what would of happened if i had told the judge I wanted to go back to grandmas instead of staying here with my mom
In the early 90s, just as the internet was taking off, I created a web site about laptop computers (imaginatively named Laptop Central). I posted reviews of the various 486 laptops, buyer’s guides and tech (PCMCIA cards, etc).
For the time period, it was huge. I was mentioned in pretty much every print magazine on laptops because there was pretty much no other content. When the site built up to around a million hits a month, my tiny ISP said I had to upgrade to a commercial account ($300/month) or move the site. I thought the price was outrageous, so closed the site to find another provider. Never happened.
Friends at the time pushed me to quit my job and try to make a go of it, but it seemed iffy. I had a clumsy hobby site, and figured it was a matter of time before someone with better HTML skills did something more polished and crushed me. Still wonder, though.
I’ve got a lot of what-ifs. But one that really nags at me is the relationship with my girlfriend (who was really all but a fiancee by then except I hadn’t actually proposed yet) that was on the verge of marriage but ended due to misunderstandings.
If I created my own heaven, this would be it: I’d have the ability to travel back to various times as a fly-on-the-wall ghost but change a decision I made, see how life played out after that. Just to know. Then tinker with another little change.
Many years ago as a single, there was a woman I maybe should have pursued. On Facebook, I subsequently learned the following from her posts.
- Jesus will take care of it.
- One day she would be clear of this $50K credit card debt.
- She isn’t afraid to post embarrassing details of breakups on social media (“Is he gay? What’s the problem?”)
So she was really not for me. When the universe has provided me information like that, it has always indicated, “Whatever made you hesitate was a good thing.”
My theory is that a lot of us were weaned on those coming attraction trailers at the movie theater. Big dramatic voice: “They said he would never walk. But he knew he had the heart of a champion. Walking was just the beginning.” And then of course the images are some guy competing in the Olympics etc. The message is: if you fail at something you wanted in life, it’s because you give up too easily. I say: not everybody gets to be an astronaut. A lot of very competent people never get to ride, through no fault of their own and certainly not for lack of trying.
My hunch is we’d end up pretty much in the same place because of who we are determining how we respond to what life gives us. I once considered getting a real estate license and the broker who taught the class said, “Boy grows up in the country, goes to college, gets big degree to work and hustle in the city…so he can retire in the country?”
I’ve never read the source of it but I love the quote.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
T.S. Eliot
When I was a child, maybe eight or ten years old, I was entered into the Christ Church Cathedral Choir in Indianapolis. I found the studying material to be quite difficult, and I didn’t advance with the rest of my class, but was offered a chance to stay in the probationary period for a second year. I felt insulted and dropped out.
I’ve always wondered what might have happened if I stuck with it. That choir is a big freakin’ deal. They go on European tours, and to this day, I’ve still only been to one other foreign country, The Bahamas, in my life.
Most of my “what ifs” are job related. Of all the jobs over my lifetime, age 13 and on, that I’ve applied for, accepted, rejected, not gotten, etc. were examined they really determined everything in my life from relationships to where I lived to career paths.
If I had gotten a job I applied for 25 years ago I would have never moved out of state, never met my current group of friends, never met my wife, never lived in the house I’m in, never had the kids I’ve had.
I was a math major in college, but I worked for the theater on campus. One time, I was helping a traveling theater group that was using our stage - I was going up and down a rickety ladder hanging lights. One of their roadies was watching me and said “That guy’s insane.” If you get called crazy by a roadie, you’re doing something right! I thought about taking a bridge year after college working with theater groups; instead I went to Grad school. What if I had?
Back in the day, I attended a mid-western state college and majored in Theatre. Once, the professional troupe “The Acting Company” came through to give a few performances at the college. The Acting Company was run by John Houseman, and this was just after the time he found new fame for his role in The Paper Chase. Anywho, as part of the visit, he did a Q&A with the students in the Theatre department. Me, being a small town kid going to a state school, I had no idea of the next steps after college in pursuing and acting career. So, I asked him, “What should one do next?” In his inimitable condescending way, he said, “Go to New York or Los Angeles.” Duh, obviously!
Consequently, I made a project of finding big time acting schools to audition for. I auditioned for Julliard (didn’t get in), and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (I don’t think they turn anyone down). I was accepted for AADA, and in their acceptance package they had a card where you checked which campus you wanted to attend: “New York” or “Los Angeles”. My logic was very rudimentary, “Hm, I’ve been to New York, and I haven’t been to LA. And, if things turn out bad, I won’t freeze to death in LA. So, LA it is!” The rest is history, I lived in LA the rest of my life until very recently.
But it truly was a Red Pill/Blue Pill - pick one situation. I have always wondered, “What if I had picked New York?”
I knew about miniature horses but not donkeys. OMG are they cute! I can picture one nuzzling me as I type.
Sorry to hear - would you like to elaborate?
I sometimes think of the fact I was interested in the mathematics and computing theory behind bitcoin, so early on in the project I actually downloaded the source code and messed around with it, but didn’t actually fire it up and mine any bitcoin (in common with countless other interesting open source projects I’ve downloaded, messed around with, and thought “I’ll have to look into this more sometime”).
Though if I’m being honest the other side of this "what if’ is not a bitcoin billionaire. Even if I failed to be one of those people who realize they have 100s of millions of dollars of bitcoin keys on a trashed hard-drive, there is close to zero chance I wouldn’t have sold them all the moment it was worth any money at all: “These dumb numbers i created on my GPU are worth HUNDREDS of dollars, Sell! sell! before they crash”
I know! I was so wrong! 
A lot of heavy stuff here and I feel for everyone. Me too, but for now I won’t dwell on the heavy.
I left college at a bad time employment wise. Unemployed for ten months, travelled so many miles for interviews that I could have taken a job anywhere on the planet and racked up less mileage (every interview in England by the way). In desperation I applied for lousy local jobs as well as the ones I was actually qualified to do. Hell, what would have happened if one of those applications had been accepted?
I would have spent my life in the parochial north west doing something menial and dead end. Instead I got relatively lucky. It turned out pretty well in the end. But it could have gone a very different way.
j