What is the biggest mistake you have made in life? 2 on 1 #4

Okay - time to come clean. What is the biggest mistake I have made in my life? The answer is easy, embarrassing and colossal, IMHO.

Starting at a fairly young age, many if not most things came easy to me. In grade school in Colorado I was always number 1 or 2, in constant competition with my pal Dave Perkins. I left for California before fifth grade, and it turns out Dave was the star quarterback on the state champion high school football team.

In California I was still a good student, but I never had to work hard at it. When I hit the proverbial wall in math, I had math whiz friends to help me out. Every other class was easy.

That was the good news. The bad news was that my only real interest was sports. With the exception of !y first love, baseball , success came fairly easy. All the while, nothing else really interested me. I was - and remain to this day, very shy. I suspect that is why I was not an overly aggressive football player, but I was good. I wrestled for 2 years and placed 3rd in the league my first year 2nd in league my second year, 3rd in the North Coast and made it to the state tournament.

I graduated fairly high in my class but I graduated clueless about life after high school.

I was accepted into the University of California system buy instead enrolled in the local comunity college, hoping to find myself. (Some say I am still looking and they are probably right).

I am now of the opinion that entering any college without a notion about what you want or need to get out of it is a huge mistake. I played football for another couple of years with some success but my lack of commitment collided head on with what was required to continue on to the next level. I briefly considered going to BYU and might have kept playing but my then girlfriend - a student there, left college so I enrolled in Cal- State University. Again, I haad no idea what courses to pursue but I did enjoy Political Science and eventually earned a BA. I was also married and in the real world, but still without any real direction. Lynn and I were essentially winging it. My best friends were well on the way to careers as a pilot, dentist, Park Ranger and entrepreneur.

By now you may be wondering what all of this has to do with the weekly topic. Then again, maybe you are wondering why I never developed passion for anything. Or perhaps you have guessed that I essentially drifted through life unable to commit to anything career wise. Who wouldn't want to commit to repossessing mobile homes, Pacific Finance or one of the other snooze fest jobs I encountered along the way. In my case it was always easy to get by. Lynn had found something she enjoyed and was good at so I was supportive, and that got us transferred across the country twice.


Long story short, we ended up in Los Angeles and I ended up joining RadioShack in 1977 and other than a stint as a contract programmer for a few years was there until they went bankrupt and I joined the ranks of the retired. I spent 30 plus years working in the electronics world.

I have managed to live a fairly decent life, but find myself wondering what could have been had I ever developed real focus - what would have been different?

No - I am not feeling sorry for myself. I accept full responsibility for where I am and how everything got to this point as I enter the drain circling stage of life. I simply made a huge mistake early on and should have worked harder at developing the passion required to be really successful - then again, making a lot of money was never the most important thing to me. Perhaps things ended as they should have. As I have said on occasion in this blog, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. I guess I should have figured sooner that time flies whethet you are having fun or not.



Check what Ramana has to say here,