If you could take a mulligan (do over) for one thing in your life, what would it be? - Page 3

I guess I got pretty lucky, and so far all the choices I've made, good and bad, have summed up to put me in a pretty good place. Who knows what kind of chain reaction could happen if I replaced anything!

I'd have probably ended the longest, most meaningful relationship of my life about two years earlier. Folks who say it's 'better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all' should try it some time. That'd shut 'em up.

The thing is, people talk about having made a wrong turn at the crossroads, but the problem is that most of the time they don't believe they actually have an option. Or they appear to be at a crossroads, but the choice that has to be made is obvious.

I've had a few blazingly obvious crossroads moments in my life. I remember back in 2002 when the embedded OS vendor I was working for went under, and i immediately got scouted by a competitor - who was acting in a very suspicious manner, and i basically had the choice to go along with it and maybe get a job that would take me to the other side of the country and a thousand miles away from anyone i even vaguely know, or wait for some other job to come along.

It was a 'no honor among thieves' sort of vibe. They approached me, very aggressively, and insisted that before there would be any possibility of an interview i should substantiate my former salary by providing W2 forms and pay stubs. That they wanted original, signed copies of performance reviews. And a bunch of other stuff, all up front.

I told them i had to think about it, and they called and emailed every day for a week.

I finally told them that i didn't believe that it was appropriate to provide them with these documents prior to a successful interview, but I'd be happy to provide them before salary negotiations and not a minute sooner. Never heard from them again. Six months later they hired someone i vaguely knew for that position, and he was there for years.

It was a wrenching decision, and i was unemployed for 10 months after that, and finally took a job far below my earning potential, that i was stuck in for 18 months.

But the truth is that i wouldn't have ever gone through with that job. There's no way i would have accepted it, and even if i had i'd have probably regretted it.

And i knew that lindsey was slipping away, and deep down i suspected that it would end badly, and end worse the further out i let it slide. But she meant too much for me to just throw in the towel. It was a foolish decision that cost me more grief than i could have ever anticipated, but it was the decision that i was bound to make.

Who i was at the time, and what i knew and felt at the time, there was only one path i could take.

How about, i wish i hadn't asked out that girl i worked with in 1997. Talk about awkward. If she hadn't been so private about her life I'd have known ahead of time that she was 'engaged to be engaged' already. $diety knows why she wasn't willing to let that slip even at that moment, and made up some other BS reason to turn me down at the time. Eight months later she was hitched.

Most of my regrets have something to do with girls. There are several I should have asked out before it was too late, and one in particular who I should have told to leave me alone much sooner.
I find it very hard to play the 'If only I had...' game. It makes me far too sad.

There was the time when I was a teenager and asked this lady when her baby was due..
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Is your name Brian? Because you're exactly like one of my close friends.

I feel similarly. So do lots of other people I know. I don't think this helps, but you're not alone.

You sound like a person who would rather lock up a troubled kid than help him. That's a great attitude people have these days.... I've been there and it wasn't any ******** help at all, just made me more of a "terrorist."

My life was so simple until about 8 weeks ago and I literally walked through a door (a real door not just a metaphorical one) and I met someone who has now made my life such a mess. Trouble is 10 years ago I had already put the wheels in motion, without knowing it: In 1999 I was happy in my life and I joined a company and I went far. I had the love and support of a good woman and I changed jobs (a few times) to make life better. So many years pass and a few jobs later the old company rehire me in a different location, in a different job (solely on the strength of my knowledge of the company and systems which I help to develop 10 years ago). And I then a meet someone at work who has just blown me away and brought my world to its knees. Trouble is there was nothing wrong with my old life. Worse still is this person is my boss and if I want to be with her I can't stay in the job (we both know how we feel towards each other) and due to it been my job I can't leave, and I don't want to loose what I have. Oh and to make things even more complicated they both have the same first name! So my mulligan is not to have applied for that job ten years ago.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

I'm still very young (24) but I've learned that there's nothing more rewarding than teaching myself new things (by research and other means) rather than asking for help at every turn. I also retain more knowledge that way, especially if I make some mistakes along the way. But that's life, you have to make mistakes to learn how to get through it.

It's true what you said though; once you hear about the tough times of other people, your troubles seem very small. For instance, I'm not the smartest person my age at work but I do my job just as well as anyone. Of course, this has bothered me a couple of times but in the end it's really not something I should worry about. I consider myself very lucky if this is one of the few things I seldom worry about.

If you want to be successful there's nothing more important than the desire to succeed and plain old hard work. Some people excel at things their first try while others make some mistakes. As long as you're the person who can learn from their mistakes then you'll turn out just fine.

i like that sentiment.

For me it is probably the choice of telling something to someone who I let slip away without knowing what I felt for her.


Some of that I can relate to, to a degree, I am born premature as well and I have periods where I feel like you describe in some of your other posts in this thread.

It may of course not apply to everyone, and even if it does then it is hard to say that it is due to premature birth but alot of research would indicate that premature children have on average more problems settling in in life.

Like most people I have had rainy days and longer periods and my premature birth and the fact that I have been told to be lucky is a double edged sword. Many times I get a bit sad and feel "displaced" and have a very flurtatious (spelling) relation to life and death, and indifference comes a bit to easy on my behalf in relation to myself (something I have to work on) but other times my premature birth and the fact that I have been lucky makes me happy and is something that protects me when I am depressed because it makes me feel happy afterall that I did turn out ok (reasonably :-) and I have had good years, its like life is a bonustrip and it makes me more humble and easygoing towards feelings such as death cause I could have checked out so long ago anyway, but I am still here and often feel I do not have much to loose, in a positive sense that is.

I don`t know if it helps but it is part of what I think about it.

Forgetaboutit. Don't ruin your security for a fling with love. I've known too many guys (I'm 50) who decided that real love had walked in their door ... and went on to destroy their marriages/careers/children) because they suddenly got the hots for someone new (Hm, can we say the "soul mate" of South Carolina's governor?). Listen, Harlan Ellison, the writer, was married six or seven times and after all his elation and failures he penned a book called "LOVE is just SEX misspelled). That's all it is 99.99 percent of the time. They've even found the same chemical in the brain of people "in love" in the brains of the mentally unstable. Yours sound like a classic case of a guy about to self-destruct his life for a bit of nookie. "And I then a meet someone at work who has just blown me away and brought my world to its knees" Pure self-justification hokum. Snap out of it. Take it from someone who's been through this process again and again, DONT DO IT.


PS: But you won't listen because your balls are ruling your brain now. And when youre the grunt learning the ropes on you new job selling widgets; your daughter tries to kill herself, and a third of your salary goes to the ex-wife who HATES you, remember I told you so. Oh, do I sound harsh? Maybe because I'm tired of seeing my middle age crisis friend screw up like this again and again. Humans are just way too predictable.

I would either redo the 3rd grade (the year I started to slack off) or redo the time that I was babysitting my friend's guinea pig and forgot to lock its cage up (my dog killed it).

EDIT:
But I don't dwell on what might have been. I take things for what they are and I don't regret my decisions. Instead I consider my mistakes "learning experiences".
haha This coming from a 15 year old.