Someone and I can't remember who...

recently wrote something about how regrets are a waste of time.

I don't know that I disagree completely.  But I think reflection can be healthy in moderation and I also think that as we age and begin to consider "bucket lists", part of what helps us to construct them are our regrets.  I've actually never seen the film "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and I'm not adding it to any bucket list, nor am I working on one at the moment.  But for whatever reason I feel the need to explore things I did accomplish, those I did not (yet) and which of them I regret.  If you find this boring, I may or may not get to Fun With Classified and This Date in History, but I will do my best and you may want to skip ahead.

A few months ago I was dining with friends and one remarked that I've done a lot of different "stuff" (not the word he used) in my life.  That may or may not be true.  I joined the military while still in high school and went off to basic training weeks after graduation.  During high school I worked in fast food restaurants, in my father's business, as a busboy in an upscale eaterie, as a shipping clerk, as a scorekeeper and a porter at a bowling alley, and as a janitor.

During my time in the military I worked part-time jobs in fast food, as a floor-guard and later disc jockey at a roller rink, as a clerk in an adult bookstore, as a disc jockey in a club, as a reporter/news anchor/writer/editor at an all-news radio station, and as an FM DJ.

After I got out, I worked for a social service organization, spent almost 17 years working at a private school doing a very wide variety of tasks, worked for a non-profit that houses the homeless, did income tax returns for 18 years, and worked for two different nursing registries.

Or to put it more tersely, I've had a hell of a lot of different jobs.  Are there any jobs I regret not pursuing?  Some.  I wish I'd been smarter and gone to law school.  I wish I'd finished my damn undergrad degree earlier in life so I might have done that.  I wish I'd pursued journalism more doggedly.  I wish I'd studied harder in high school so that I might not have had few alternatives other than the military upon graduation.  Going to a community college right out of high school would have been a disaster and I recognized that long ago.

But I was offered another path and turned it down and perhaps that was a mistake.  My manager at McDonald's wanted me to blow off the military and enter the management-training program, sending me to Hamburger High and ultimately to Hamburger University.  The person that went down that path in my place, at last check, owned two McDonald's franchises of his own.  That might have been me.  Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps not.  This is a choice I don't regret.  I learned a lot in ten years in the military.  Granted, some of those skills have little value today.  Being able to survive in the wilderness or to make napalm just have no practical applications at present.

In late 1983/early 1984 I received orders to go to South Korea on a one year assignment.  I'd volunteered for this, so I have no regrets about the choice to volunteer.  But I made a really bad choice while meeting with the personnel clerk handing my assignment.  He talked me into asking for what's known as a "follow-on" assignment, which is where the next base you will go to following a one year "short" tour overseas is decided before you leave for that short tour.  I put in for and was approved for an assignment to the big base in Las Vegas.  That was a real mistake.

Because while I was in South Korea I was offered a four year-controlled assignment to a base in Japan, to establish a new unit headquarters.  It was a dream assignment, an almost guaranteed promotion and I'd pretty much get whatever assignment I wanted after the tour was over.  But I couldn't take the offer because I was committed to go to a job on a base in Las Vegas that I had no interest in.  That choice marked the beginning of the end of my military career.

I have very few regrets about what happened after that, employment wise.  I don't regret my time at the school, or doing taxes, or going back and finishing my undergraduate degree.

I don't regret either of my marriages.  There were lessons to be learned.  There was an earlier relationship, before I ever got married, that I regret the end of.  She ended it and then two years later asked if we could try again.  But by then I was with the woman who would become my second wife so I couldn't pursue that opportunity.  I suspect that had I been able to re-connect with that particular woman I would be happily married today, 25 years after she reached out for the last time.

So what I have I learned from this analysis of regrets?  That I'm pretty much like everyone else.  I've made choices in life that I regret, but I can't avoid the fact that much of what happened as a result of those choices turned out well.  I can't go back and change things.  So I shouldn't dwell on my regrets and I won't.  But the exercise of reflecting on them is a healthy one, reminding me of some lessons I may not have been paying enough attention to.

No ads today but there is a This Date in History:

On this date in 1917, Ukraine was declared a Republic.
On this date in 1940, Hungary joined the Axis Powers.
On this date in 1945, the Nuremberg trials for war crimes began.
On this date in 1947, then Princess Elizabeth married her current husband, Phillip Mountbatten.
On this date in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ends.
On this date in 1969, American Indian activists seized control of Alcatraz.
On this date in 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel.
On this date in 1993, the Senate Ethics Committee censures Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) for his role in the Savings and Loan crisis.
And on this date in 2008, the financial crisis drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its lowest point since 1997.