Things you wished you would have done when you were younger.....

It's funny... I would say the opposite. I wish my younger self didn't take life so seriously. I wish I'd had been less serious and had more stupid fun.

I'm 45 and having the best time of my life, and a huge part of it is realizing that life's just supposed to be lived. I know that doesn't make sense, but it does to me. It's an old saw, but I really do wish I'd had this brain in my 18-year-old self. I would have crushed.

 

Certainly one way to look at it, I was a hard-drinking, hard-living guy into my late-20s, makes for some good stories - that I can recall, anyway - but on one hand you wonder if you just literally pissed away a lot of good years

 

That's why I was writing about balance earlier in the thread. I think many of us went too far one direction or the other, too serious or two reckless.

Like type, I've had the thought that my 18-year-old self would certainly have fared much better with my mid-40s brain. That's probably true for all of us.

 

This might be a grass is always greener effect at play. Or it might be what OOP is saying—a good life is about finding the right balance, and maybe you and I went too far in one direction or the other.

I'll give you an example from my life that I'd change if I could. When I was in undergrad, I majored in Political Science. For some reason, I got it in my head that minors mattered to my future. I got dual minors in History and Geography. Doing a major and two minors meant that I had room for only four electives in my entire four years of school. In my last year, I acted in a play during the Drama Festival, so I got to hang out with the drama kids, and I fucking loved it. I should have taken a bunch of drama, but I'd burned my electives by then and stayed committed to getting my minors.

No one in the history of this life or the next has asked me about my minors in undergrad. Hell, I'm not sure anybody's asked me about my major. Now, I could say that I didn't know at the time what sort of career I would have (read: one in which my education—its subjects or my grades—did not matter a bit). And because I was a serious student, I got full rides and graduated debt free. That's good. But my liberal arts education was hardly liberal. When I was young, I was like that: I had a tendency to put myself into boxes for no good reason. That's what I'm talking about.

 

My how things change...jk

 

That's just middle-age perspective kicking in. I'm been experiencing the same thing in recent years, and especially, lately. It seems like I want nothing more now than to have the time -- both in a short-term daily scheduling type of way and in more esoteric long-term years of life -- and the money -- which I now feel like I can hardly accumulate fast enough with my humble job -- to afford to do all the great things I want to do and experience before I run out of either, or both.

Whereas work used to be my life, now it is truly becoming simply a means to do other things and go other places, even though I do still enjoy my job, and even though I still approach it with the same drive and work ethic that I've always had. It's the perspective that has changed, though.

I think we're just feeling and becoming more conscious of our mortality. I don't need to have stupid fun, but I do want to have as much meaningful and valuable fun as possible.

 

Gone to an L.A. Rams game when they had Dickerson, or any Rams game.

Kissed Lydia when I had the chance in 8th grade.

Punched Carlos in a fight he challenged me to after school in front of the cool kids ... when he left an opening.

Approached Chick Hearn with my million dollar idea.

 

I wish I would have run track in high school. I had one year to participate in sports because I was to start working in the family business every day after school once I got my driver's license. I went out for the baseball team and got cut, so I was bummed. I later started hanging around track practice with my buddies and found I was faster than most of the sprinters, but I never made an effort to join the team.

I always tell high schoolers to try many different things, since that's their one shot at it. Try a sport, audition for a play, join a club. Don't be in your 40s or 50s looking back at what might have been.

 

Tried to play college tennis. I was a basketball and baseball guy and those were the two sports that everyone in my family played. Our school didn't have a tennis team. Basically about five people in town even played (they razed the court few years back, finally). But I played my friend a lot and got pretty good and played in summer tourneys. Never had a single day of coaching or practice but could kick the asses of the top players in the area in the summer. Before my senior year, the coach in the neighboring town wanted me to come play with them but then they would have had to take all of our school size and it would have bumped them up to another class. Meanwhile, I'd started playing with a kid in town who was three years younger. He was really good, got coaching, played all the time all over. I kicked his ass for three years and finally he did beat me when I was in college. But they changed the rules by the time he was a senior and he played at a neighboring town and they didn't have to change any enrollment rules. He received a D2 scholarship and is now a tennis pro down in Florida. I ended up playing juco hoops and basketball was and remains my number one love, but I don't have any doubt I could have played D2 tennis, or at least should have tried it when I transferred to a D3 school after junior college. Would have liked to have seen how I could have done if I'd ever actually received some coaching or practice time.

Aside from that, said yes to Katie D on New Year's Eve of senior year in high school.

 

I wish I'd played golf in high school. There were no cuts.

Had my favorite coach in what is now my favorite sport.

Instead, I was on the track team. Because, girls.

 

I did something similar, I took typing class with a buddy (1980); 2 guys, 90 girls. Secondary benefit we never thought of, we were keyboard proficient when the computer revolution hit!

 

Curious what that was?