What would I have done differently?

BB said that if he were 30/40 years younger he might have taken on different challenges. I wonder what we might have chosen to do differently with our lives if we could live those years over again?

In my case I would certainly have come to France and bought my fields earlier while I was younger and had more energy. A house in England that cost next to nothing by today's standards that I was paying forever with a mortgage, didn't really add much to my life, but the people I met and worked with in the village and district did.

Having married early and stayed that way, I often had the desire to be a real hippy, but then with children, a reasonable job, and a collar and tie, that had to be put to one side. My company accountant once told me that if he could do something differently he would have been a groundsman for a county cricket club.

Maybe I could have been that person stood on the back of the stage playing keyboards with a rock band. I would have loved that, but do not like hotel rooms if it had been successful and involved touring.

Of course it is no good dreaming what might have been, but in these quiet days it is quite good to think about a different lifestyle.

Anyone else think that life could have taken a different turn?

 

Apart from changing a couple of bad decisions with family / money I would not change anything else, even during the early years of financial struggle. I doubt I could have found a better woman than the one who has put up with me for over 50 years.

Hindsight is wonderful thing but invariably comes far too late.

 

Here "hubiera" doesn't exist or so goes the expression.

Everyone has regrets, it is how you deal with them that makes a boy a man or so my dad tells me.

 

I wasn't thinking so much about regrets Mex, as about what fun one might have had if you had made some different choices.

 

hahahaha that the "hubiera"

 

I guess that my interests now are so different from when I was young that I would have gone down a completely different professional route and studied either botany or zoology. Other than that I wish I had never started smoking ! A lot of my friends took the hippy overland path to India and Afghanistan (a few stayed there), but I never did this I was never more than a weekend hippy.

 

Just thought more about this - I wish I had worked harder at school - I left at 15 and had to take the necessary exams later in life in order to study, which was the more difficult way.

 

One of my longtime friends missed out on the first couple of years of schooling due to illness, and was put in the class with the hopeless and naughty kids. He often relates how he received a certificate for compost making. He went on to become a bit of a boffin on things that we are not allowed to talk about due to the official secrets act. There is no telling how things sometime turn out.
My first French teacher at secondary school was fluent and how how I enjoyed learning something new. He left for greater things and was replaced by a Middlesex 2nd XI cricket player who must have been on holiday to Calais once because he was hopeless. I completely lost interest with the rest of the class, and only started again to try and learn the language thirty years later. Today without being fluent I do still enjoy learning new words and expressions.

 

Thinking back over my own 'Sliding Doors' decisions, I think I can honestly say that I'm happy with the choices I made myself. A different story for decisions that were made for me though - such as schooling. After leaving Edinburgh for Watford, I found myself in what I can only describe as a completely different world - one in which teachers didn't actually teach in a way that suited me, and the curriculum offered was far too academic. I would have been far happier studying practical things such as woodwork/metalwork but my parents wouldn't let me change schools. Had they allowed me to, I would very likely have gone down a different career path. Ironic that, after walking out of school at 16 and vowing never to go back, I became a teacher later in life.

That seems to leave just the two things I would have done differently if given the chance.

Firstly, I never had the opportunity to learn how to read music or play a musical intstrument, either at school or at home - and would have loved to learn to play the guitar. After giving all my children the opportunity/encouragement to do so, it's odd that I now find myself secretly jealous of two of my boys - one who has a music degree and the other who is currently studying for the same.

Secondly, I'd change my attitude to sport. I treated it purely as a social outlet in Australia and, like many Aussies, found myself playing and training for both football and rugby during winter months, and basketball, cricket and squash during summer months - all simply to play at a social level. Looking back, the injuries I had during that time were probably the cause of some health issues I now have. So rather than indulge myself in five sports, I'd concentrate on just the one - squash. Although I played at quite a high standard, I was self-taught, had never had any coaching and never 'immersed' myself in it - I like to think that, had I concentrated on it back then, I could have taken it up professionally.

 

Having just watched the SF series DEVS ... this has limitless possibilties.

On a personal note, I think I would have got it together with one of the goregous girls in my teens and had several kids.

I would definitely studied and developed my interests I now have in the environment, where at this stage of life it is really hard to learn bird song and animal tracks.

Career wise, an alternate career would have been to take up the chances offered to me by family to take up a career in film, I would have loved to be a wildlife photographer and travel the world, sitting in hides to catch glimpses of snow leaopards etc.. nowaadays my knees and bladder wont let me sit for long.

 

I don't know about regrets or doing things differently but there are key moments in my life where a seemingly innocuous decision (like deciding to walk to Holborn tube rather than use Tottenham Court Road tube) or a few seconds would have resulted in very different outcomes. It would be intriguing to see where my life would have gone.

 

Ultimately I don't know if I would change anything. However I'm acutely aware that had I had the courage to follow through my convictions as a youth and put in a bit more effort at critical times life would have been altogether different. Not necessarily better, but different.

 

This has been a very stimulating question and I have been letting it float in my synapses for a couple of days..
So many possible actions, so many opportunities.

I guess a more practical one might be knowing what i know now and reflecting on my life so far, what do I want to choose on my life as it goes forward?

 

Interesting that no one has said they would have tried to be a pro footballer, or an earlier ambition of many boys to be a train driver.

 

Probably a sign that everyone is realistic and knew their abilities?

And, after the Great Train Robbery, I never considered driving a train.

 

Certainly true in my case.

 

Too much hard work to be a footballer..
And tbh i see enough of steam trains with the kids!

 

When we were young there wasn't the same financial incentive to be a footballer. An average footballer would earn a lot less than those in most reasonably good jobs. Today, even a League 2 player is paid much more than the national average,

 

When I checked up on Stuart Scullion a while back he was working as a baggage handler at Heathrow - can you imagine such a situation today?

 

I sometimes think back about past decisions and whether what direction another would have taken me on. The opportunity cost of taking the other decision can be interesting.
If I had not met my first wife I would not have met my second, and that would have been a great loss.
Job wise I might have preferred to be a Surgeon, Pilot or perhaps preferably something in Horticulture (in fact I nearly quit University to do just that). Going into teaching was a mistake when I should have gone into Accountancy at which I was competent at, certainly not a high flyer though.