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!
I aim at 10 minutes a day of Pilates and walking a mile, Brenda. Right now I’m sidelined with a knee strain.
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)
I’ll take a T, Pat…er, Jim. I can see you as a game show host. And that would have left time for writing!
Maybe not hitchhike to Toronto with my boyfriend and my cat instead of going to university…
That sounds like a very educational trip, Pam!
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.
None of us like change, Alan…even when it might be good for us. Btw, I love flying!
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!
😎
Makes perfect sense, Deb. I look forward to your return!
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.
Oh, wow, Bill…that was two hard choices!
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…
Me, too, Debbie! And like you said, nothing is wasted. Many of my characters make the same dumb mistakes I did. Lol
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.
Sometimes it’s just hard to put our work out there, Dale. I wish I’d found critique groups earlier.
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.
I love your “ mistakes remain the what if… but remember, those mistakes are what made you who you are today.” statement, Barbara.
I call if-I-had-done-it-I’d-be-rich mistakes a Pepsi disaster after a college friend whose parents didn’t buy into Pepsi when it was worth nothing. If I’d bought the amount on Apple stocks as I did on all the Apple computers I’ve bought since the early 80s, I’d be filthy rich.
The older I get the more I realize big mistakes of more importance than stock prices pushed me in directions I didn’t expect or want but were inevitable. Science fiction isn’t wrong about time travel and change.
I so agree, Marilynn, about mistakes pushing us in directions we didn’t expect or want. Some of my biggest mistakes have turned out for a better me.
“because that would alter what made me what I am today.” True words of wisdom. We are the sum of everything we have ever done or experienced.
Absolutely Marshall! I’ve lived a good life as a result of some of my mistakes.
At this point in my life, more than three quarters of a century is seen clearly in the rear view mirror. Looking back, perhaps I should have taken my college girlfriend on that trip to Woodstock that she was begging me to drop everything and take her. What a trip that would have been.
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But if I had taken that trip, my future would have headed off in another direction. Instead, I stayed at the university and worked that summer in the oil patch. By the standards of poor college students, I made a lot of money and bought a new car. It wasn’t fancy but it would carry 6 passengers (an important feature that I only appreciated much later.) I finished college and moved to the southern coast. That car earned me a knock on my apartment door by 2 beautiful girls from a nearby finishing school.
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I was selected to be their “approved male escort.” I later learned, just the next one in a long series. Yes, that was a thing back then. They fabricated a cover story for a dumb ol’ country boy commoner like me that allowed them to be off campus with me after evening meals. I was expecting a date with one girl, as that was all I thought I might be able to handle. They had something different in mind.
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I would have one official date and 4 others would sign out using my name and hide in my 6 passenger car. I took them to my apartment where I had invited 24 of my military buddies over for a party. Rinse and repeat 4 more times and we had an equal number of guys and girls in a military town where, out-in-the-wild, guys outnumbered girls by 6 to 1. The guys thought I hung the moon, but I was more of a pauper pretending to be a prince. I felt like a sock puppet hearing the sorority president’s words coming out of my mouth to make it appear I knew how this was supposed to work. My relationships with these fine ladies were all performative, as if we were stage actors putting on a performance for an audience. Nothing real.
Almost a year later, I left the base on my first assignment in sunny southern California. Met a nice girl there had a real relationship. So different than before. We agreed to be just friends because we had lots of plans for our futures. With out guards down, we were married the next spring and have been together for over a half century.
Missed Woodstock but look at what happened because of that. Also got lots of stories to fill several books. The first, after 16 revisions, should be out later this fall. Thanks Dr. Bell for your course “How to Write Best-Selling Fiction. If I succeed, it will be in large part due to you. If I fail to take off and clear the tree line, it’s all on me. But in any case it’s been a real hoot.