I’m filling in today for Deb Gorman while she’s on hiatus, and I thought we would talk about mistakes.
We’ve all made them, especially when we’re young. Is there one mistake you’ve made, would you go back and change it? I’ll go first. I’ve made some doozies, but I’m not sure I would go back and change them because that would alter what made me what I am today.
That said, after gold was deregulated, I tried to get my husband to buy gold when it was $36 an ounce. He didn’t. Since I’m terrible at numbers, I’ll let you do the math and tell me what it would be worth today.
Okay, TKZers, is there a mistake you would go back and change? Why or why not?
Oh yes, have made plenty of mistakes but they are teaching tools.
But the one I’ll mention I wouldn’t say is a mistake but rather knowledge I wish I’d had years ago. I desperately wish that when I was younger I had gone to school to become a physical therapist. I genuinely had no idea of the physical challenges you deal with over the course of time and American society & our healthcare system is lousy at preventive health & prepping you with the physical education you need to deal with those physical challenges.
Instead, at the time I got a degree in Business Administration. Yawn…..
For this Friday, let’s all do something as we are able, to promote our lifelong mobility!
How much time do you have?
Honestly, as you say, I’d be afraid it would turn into one of those movies, like Wonderful Life, where one change would mean I didn’t meet Mrs. B, or I’d end up in a Siberian prison. (There’s a fun Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Time Cop, where time travel is real, and he goes back to prevent alterations to history).
Stock market picks are obvious ones. Amazon? I remember how Barron’s predicted “Amazon dot bomb.” Oops.
There are many mistakes I made when I was a boneheaded young man (which is almost redundant) that I certainly regret. Haven’t we all?
But if I had to pick one…when I was in college I did a magic show for a Scout troop. Larry Hovis, of Hogan’s Heroes, was in the first row, and I could tell by his face he was blown away. Afterward, he came up to me and said he worked for Ralph Andrews Productions, and I had all the makings of great game show host, and gave me his card. I didn’t follow up because I wanted to be a “serious actor.”
Oops. (File under Sajak, Pat, Almost)
Maybe not hitchhike to Toronto with my boyfriend and my cat instead of going to university…
For a long time I said no to changes. But, my degree is is aeronautics. Fun, met life long friends, love airplanes. If I had gotten a degree in Computer Science I would have lived a much better life. And met different life long friends.
Probably should have asked Shelly out on a real date instead of staring at her in English class. See her from time to time on Facebook now.
Great question, Patricia. And thanks to you and others for filling in for me. 👍
I think, as has been mentioned, that mistakes become teaching tools… if we’re willing to listen. Big if.
I have so much to choose from. A veritable Walmart of choices. Aisle after aisle, shelf after shelf labeled “if only I had or I hadn’t”. But here’s what I think I would go back and change if I could.
Graduate college. Instead, I spent a year wasting time (and my parents’ money), then dropped out.
I tried to finish decades later, but life intervened and I dropped out again. Sigh.
However, life isn’t so much about looking back as looking forward . . . but not so much that I miss what’s going on in the here and now. My past and my future can’t fulfill me the way my today can. Hope that makes sense…
Happy weekending, everyone!
😎
In the late-80s, I was invited to tag along at a VIP demo the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was performing at Quantico. I declined because I was on the schedule for a Germany trip. I could have found someone else to take the trip. It didn’t click that someone had offered me a one-time good deal until it was too late to say yes.
Nothing’s wasted. Mistakes I’ve made wind up in story characters who do the same stupid things. Usually they don’t wind up as lucky as I did. There but for the grace of God…
I have plenty of regrets, mostly around letting my self-doubt keep me from writing fully, with abandon, for so long, and not getting on the path of fiction craft sooner. When I finally did, things started happening.
Like Debbie said, nothings wasted. Mistakes can be grist for your story mill.
Lots of mistakes, but I wish I would have gone to conventions the year BEFORE my first mystery came out.
I wouldnt change the mistakes since I learned a different lesson from all of them. I married to young. Ended up dropping out of college. But that ended up a good thing. I returned to a university and got a degree that earned more than twice the pay the original degree would have gotten me.
So mistakes remain the what if… but remember, those mistakes are what made you who you are today.