Yeah I thought it was funny too till all these kids who love the site started sending me messages begging me to feed their horses 
Back in '82, I bought a run-down cottage in one of those old Methodist camp-meeting grounds in Maine, for next to nothing. I worked on it summers and got it into fairly decent shape; meanwhile, the campground was getting discovered by the sailing set (it was right on Penobscot Bay). In '89 I sold it for $85k, about nine times what I’d paid. I was living on Cape Cod, and at the time could have bought any number of fine old houses in Provincetown for around that price, but nooooooo, what did I do, I turned around and bought a log cabin, still in Maine, out in the woods. Next thing I know, the economy’s fucked and I’m living in Boston and working like a dog – never even had time to go to Maine, much. (Though I did live at the cabin for a year at one point.) I ended up selling the cabin for less than I paid for it. And you can’t buy a house in Provincetown these days for much less than half a million. Even a dumb little ranch.
Worse, Boston became too expensive to live in, and now I live in Providence, which is a very strange little town.
Why must I suffer so? :rolleyes:
ivylass: “Truth hurts, sometimes” - No, the truth never hurts, it’s the layers upon layers of lies you have to rip off to get to the truth that hurt.
But here’s my contribution: I met the love of my life, he met the love of his life. His jaw literally dropped at the sight of me. I felt like the whole world had been adjusted because I was meeting him. He was everything I didn’t know I ever wanted. I was so scared, stupid and medicated that I walked away from him without even saying hello.
The upside is: having made the worst mistake of my life, everything from there on in has to be an improvement.
No, I don’t agree with that. All you can say is that it was your worst mistake so far.
Kidding. Hang in there.
Back when I attended Western Kentucky University, I was in a Public Relations class with a wonderful girl, Gina Goff. I liked her. Really liked her. And I was told she liked me. At the time, I had a girlfriend, and being Mister Loyalty, wouldn’t act on my feelings for Gina. One day, my gf and I broke up (one of many times to come). The next day, Gina asked me if I had a gf. Relieved, I could actually truthfully answer “no” without having to explain myself. That night however, my gf reconciled, so I went back to not acting toward Gina.
Gina was beautiful, funny, hyper-intelligent, a fan of Monty Python (was queen of alt.fan.monty-python for the longest time), and I was an overweight boob that she liked for some reason. And I let her get past me while I went on to marry my gf and divorce her shortly thereafter. I tried to contact Gina one last time thru Usenet before I was married so I could aplogize to her, asking anyone on the group if they could forward a message to her that I wanted to talk. Her one word response “Well?” kind of chilled me, and I never contacted her again.
I really think she could have been the perfect one for me. Now I’ll never know. Congratulations to the man (whoever that may be) who finally won her heart.
Sigh…if anyone knows Gina from WKU, let her know someone out here still thinks of her fondly. Hopefully one day she’ll vanity search herself and this thread will show up so she can read it herself.
Spending 20 years of my life believing in socialism. What a waste.
This is an interesting older thread so I thought I would bump it.
My biggest mistake is probably that I don’t make mistakes–that my basic philosophy is “Nothing ventured; nothing lost”–so I never venture anything.
I have two mistakes that tie for first place (or last place, I suppose):
- Getting married
- Staying married for as long as I did.
Not ending my first marriage to marry the guy I shouls have married.
Looking back on my life, with one exception, the mistakes I made in my life turned out to be very important lessons for things that happened to me later.
That exception was a job I took that left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. They found an excuse to fire me after 4 months, and I nearly tossed confetti on my way out the door. I was hoping to make it to 6 months so I could transfer out, but that wasn’t meant to be. Several years later, the boss was in a near-fatal car accident, and when it was announced at a local association meeting, people just laughed and nobody signed her get-well card. She later had the newspaper and a TV station do sappy feature stories about her accident and recovery, and in both cases, the reporters’ e-mail boxes crashed because of so many people who let them know what kind of person she really was.
:eek:
OTOH, maybe it protected me from something worse. I had to move from a town I hated living in to take this job, and who knows? Maybe if I’d worked there a month later, I would have met a man who beat me, that kind of thing? I did work at that old place for a while when they found out I lost that job (I had sent them a Christmas card) through a temp agency, and they wanted to rehire me but I could see things moving in an unhealthy direction, and declined. I found out that this city has been taken over by a refugee population from an ethnicity that has caused serious problems everywhere they go; I’ll say what it is if you PM me.
I wish I hadn’t sought three degrees in English. I got them all, ages ago, but I’m still stuck in a “career” that offers few, if any, full-time positions, and my age and experience actually work against me. I should have gone into Health Occupations instead. (I’m trying to work my way into that now, but was waylaid this entire past year due to health issues.)
And speaking of health occ., I should have gone directly into the HIM or unit secretary areas instead of going for transcription (it's too damned much typing, low pay, and all being off-shored anyway) and coding (expensive exams and tons of info to learn and try to retain).
Essentially, all of my career decisions have been wrong.My biggest mistake was not dealing with self pity. I had, and still have to a certain extent, massive insecurity when it came to romance. I was solitary after high school until my mid-twenties and if I just put myself out there I would have confronted my fears a lot sooner and would have had sex and relationships years long before I actually did. (I lost my virginity at 31.) There have been a handful of women that showed possible interest in me that I couldn’t act upon because I was trapped in a pit of self pity and self doubt that I’m only now climbing out of.
As I move into my very senior years I find that what I used to regret was part & parcel of how I came to be right here & that is right where I am supposed to be.
I may think I should be over there but I find that in reality I should not be.
I’ve made tons of mistakes. Basically everything I did between 13 and 20 was terrible. But while most of that stuff only had negative effects on me the thing I regret the most hurt someone else instead. The way I see it the mistakes I made that impacted my own life were my decisions and it’s right that I should deal with the consequences but it’s wrong that someone else should have to pay for my mistakes.
Basically when I was around 16 I knowingly allowed a friend of mine to be put in a situation where she ended up really badly hurt. I knew what was going to happen and I told her I’d watch her back and I didn’t, I let her get drunk and then I left her there because I had to go home. I spent a long time trying to make up for it and we got the person locked up for a long time but of course it doesn’t change what happened. People tell me all the time that it wasn’t my fault but I think that’s kind of the required thing to say in that situation and I think it’s always going to follow me around reminding me that who I really am is someone who would do that.
Leaving behind my brand new Tri-Star vaccuum cleaner when I moved out of a boyfriend’s house. I found him a few months later and asked for it back but he said he “didn’t have it anymore” - an over thousand dollar appliance and he loses it? Yeah right.
I miss that vaccuum cleaner.
Was it Canadians? I bet it was Canadians.
Oh boy. I’m in.
Refi on my house, as a single mom barely scraping by, to loan a boyfriend $20,000.
Why no, I haven’t see him in years, nor a dime of the 20K. :mad:
My second marriage cost me six good years of my life. Huge mistake.
Pretty much daily, I make the mistake of not performing to anywhere near my real potential. Like right now, for instance.
[QUOTE=Chekmate back in 2002]
What is the worst mistake you’ve ever made?
Myself: …
I haven’t bought myself anything other then food in the last 6 months
[/QUOTE]
(emphasis mine)
** wince ** ** wince ** ** wince ** ** wince ** ** wince **
THAN. Not then, THAN.
OK, not the worst mistake you’ve ever made 
but you can add it to your list!
ETA: fucking zombies! Yeesh!
I cut the blue wire.
Well, that and I probably was too much of a Florence Nightin’male in my 20s and 30s and dated a couple of women that needed my help but that weren’t really right for me in the course of a long term relationship. I learned from it though and married the best woman I’ve ever known.
Like others have said though, overall there were tons of mistakes but you take something away from each one and become a better person for it.