Your Road Not Taken
I had been working for about a year a miserable job as a cameraman in as small TV station where no-one wanted to be. Everyone, from the talent to the producers, was simply putting in time, waiting for a job in “real TV”. The hours were long, the programming was mediocre, the pay was laughable, and the atmosphere was sour with resentment, ego and a pervasive sense of failure. It was my first job in broadcasting, and I was beginning to think I had made a terrible choice of career.
One weekend I got a call from a mandolin player, an old friend. We had played in a Celtic bar band for a couple of years; when that split up, he moved down East to look for another gig. He’d be playing with his new band that weekend at the Alexandria hotel near Cornwall. “Bring your guitar”, he said. “I want to talk to you about something.”
I joined him for a beer before his gig, and we caught up. He was doing really well, he said. The band had just had a regional hit in Nova Scotia, and they were getting ready to record an album to follow it up. They had about six months worth of gigs lined up. Would I like to sit in for a set that evening?
It was easy, and fun – the usual Black-Velvet-Band repertoire. The band was a trio, my friend plus a married couple – she was a fiddler/singer, he a guitarist and front man. They seemed like nice folks, and the music was pretty good. I fell into their onstage patter pretty quickly, and the audience seemed to enjoy us.
We retired up to their room for a drink at the end of the evening, and they popped the question. Did I want to join the band?
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If the many worlds hypothesis is correct, every moment generates an infinity of alternate realities. So the notion of a single moment, a single decision that defines your life, is illusory. But when I think of big forks in my life – contemplating two paths and making a choice that changes everything – that moment is the one I always return to.
What about you? What was your moment at the branching of the roads?
I was very depressed at the breakup of my relationship with someone who I thought I couldn’t live without.
I pulled my Dad’s hunting rifle down from the rafters and loaded it.
I sat down and put the butt of the rifle on the ground and the barrel in my mouth.
I reached down and put my thumb on the trigger.
Time seemed to stretch out in some way and in what must of been only a few seconds I reviewed my entire life up to that point and found that there was still more that I wanted to experience. I unloaded the rifle and packed it back in the rafters.
Suicide has never crossed my mind since.
The multiple worlds theory is interesting and perhaps even correct but since there can be no communication between these worlds what can we possible make of it.
Meeting Marianne.
Speaking out against some truly draconian contract provisions. I found a voice I never knew I had. I’ve been using that voice ever since.
Going with my head, instead of my heart, a few years ago when I realized staying in my marriage wasn’t the right thing to do for anybody, least of all me. Most people would say I did the opposite, but they’d be wrong. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I decided early on not to give in to my heart and go back, it was all a big mistake, everything’s going to be fine. I stayed the course, instead. And everything is fine. I still find it hard to do what I want, even though I know that doing what you want frees you up to care about other people. I just wish now that I could get up the gumption to quit my safe, secure and mind numbingly irrelevant job and take a chance on creative living.
Whenever those moments come, the big ones, that go one way or the other, it always feels like don’t really decide. Normally, I love research and deliberation. It’s fun! But it’s never how I actually make my own big life decisions.
So Arwen…what was one of them?
Making the choice to identify with my aboriginal heritage — come home to the reserve – be Indian and get good and comfortable with what that entailed. It wasn’t easy. I think I’ve shaved a good 10 years off of my life thanks to the culture shock and stresses of reserve life and politics… but every single step has been worth it. I know what *family* is – I know what it means — not just the english/non-native word/concept.. but how my aboriginal people mean it… and that has deeply and profoundly changed my life forever.
In 1970, when I was 21, I rejected an offer from the US Selective Service System. They were offering an all expense paid trip to Vietnam. I chose to relocate from the land of the free to my mother’s homeland: Canada. No regrets.
In the ensuing 40 years, there have been a few other big turning points: becoming a parent, divorce, remarriage, grandparenthood, late life career change, shaving off a 30 year old moustache…
JB
JB, what about the “dye your skin green” decision?
@balbulican – Is it real or is it Photoshop? You missed your chance to find out a coupla months ago.
Oh, I know it’s real. Stageleft told me.
I realize that people may not think meeting someone is a decision. I agree: these things are sometimes simply meant to be. But acting on that meeting, realizing, and going forward as we did in our odd and wonderful way, was a mutual decision. (Or was it a decision? Could it have been fate?)
Meeting someone is a decison, I think. Of course, life, to me, is a series of decisions, one after another. And fraught. Omigawd. I once had someone tell me, out of the kindness of his heart, when I was paralyzed with indecision, that there’s no such thing as a good decision or a bad decision, there’s just a decision.
Fate only happens in fairytales.
Okay, since you asked… I can’t really remember a big decision of mine that affected my life to such a degree. I’ve always been pretty confident about the path I’ve taken, and if I’ve been pushed off that path, I’ve often found it the result of things I can’t control. But one major decision was made for me.
Back in 1989, my father — who worked for the Ontario civil service — went back to work after a two week vacation and, two hours later, returned home to say that he had abruptly quit his job. Truthfully, the job itself and the office politics involved, had been wearing on him for ages, and he had the last straw placed on his back upon his return from his vacation. So, that was it.
For me, this came as a shock. I had not seen it coming. And it set into motion considerable changes to my life, which had been pretty comfortable in the home we owned in downtown Toronto. Now we were going to sell it and take up residence in cheaper Kitchener. I was going to study to be an urban planner, but my school would now be the University of Waterloo rather than U of T or Ryerson. But most of all, I was going to give up my city. I consider that point to be the exact moment when my childhood basically ended.
Well, it wasn’t so bad. That was probably my angsty teenage self speaking. But this feeling, coupled with the natural worries of going through university and facing graduation in the midst of a recession all coalesced into a story that I ended up writing for the Doctor Who fan fiction magazine I was editing at the time. After listening to way too much Enya and Clannad, I wrote a tale about the sadness of days gone by, Celtic twilight and the innocence of youth. It was called “Smaointe (Reflections)” and you can find it online here. It’s not bad, even if I do say so myself, but you should just be warned that my writing then was a lot younger than my writing now.
Well, it was 1994, and I happened to post the story to the Usenet group alt.drwho.creative, where it was read by a young woman doing a work term at the particle accelerator facility at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Impressed by the quality of the fan fiction, and my willingness to use Gaelic in my dialogue, she dropped me an e-mail to thank me for the story, and we got to talking about Doctor Who, and why she was writing me from Switzerland of all places, and we became instant pen pals.
Her name, of course, was Erin Noteboom.
The rest, as the say, is history.
Agreeing to support my wifes decision to carry my 5 year-old to term…and making sure I was here to raise him. 2 month old daughter wasn’t as big of a decision – I’ve been broken in.
To this day, I can’t figure out what I would do without my boy.
When I was 18, I took a computer programming course and aced it. The teacher begged me to go into computer science (this was the mid 70’s), and he even offered to get me in touch with some professors he knew at the local university. I told him that computers were “fun” but they were “just a fad”. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Wow. The road taken/not taken? That’s a tough one. I’ve tried to live my life with the view that regrets on my deathbed will be minimal when it comes to risk-taking. And I also firmly believe that every choice/decision I’ve made in the past, good or bad, has led me to be the person I am today, definitely flawed but one I can live with regarding who I am as a mother, as a friend, as a lover and as an employee/colleague/boss (wanting to confirm the obvious, that I’m not “all of the above” to any one person!).
Here are 2, one (possibly) minor, one notsomuch.
Minor: Deciding to return to Canada for Grade 12 – my father was being transferred to Indonesia and there was no western school available other than correspondence, so my choices were boarding school in Switzerland or Singapore (unfortunately, Australia wasn’t an option or I’d have likely gone for that). I couldn’t see trying to break into what would likely have been a very clique-y situation for the final year of school in either country and was unilingual so Switzerland, the ‘coolest’ choice, didn’t make a lot of sense when I discovered there isn’t really an English-speaking (1st language) part of the country. Remaining in Baton Rouge wasn’t an option from an immigration standpoint (I was in the country on Dad’s visa, not a student visa), so returning to Canada and living with extended family for Gr 12 made the most sense to me at the time. This resulted in me meeting the guy that leads to the major one.
My road not taken that would have had a major impact? Listening to my mother when, 3 days before my wedding (at the absurd and should-be-illegal age of 19) she told me it wasn’t too late to back out, and I said no, things will all work out. Of course, the marriage ended 3 years later for pretty much the same reasons my mom & I were discussing options at that late date, but who can tell a 19-yr-old anything? On the upside of that bad decision, I had to grow up pretty fast when deciding to leave the marriage. I had to put myself and my needs ahead of anyone else (something I still find hard to do, even with practice over the years), buck my family (i.e. the only person in my family that thought I was right was my brother, a paranoid schizophrenic!) and figure out how to live by myself and figure out who, exactly, I was and what I stood for (at least at the time, as that keeps changing). I don’t think I’d have made similar choices for myself had I listened to Mom and canceled the wedding (although I guess I’ll never know now).
Upon reading my answer, I’m thinking the first one may have had a bigger, longer-term impact on my left than the 2nd…
@Candace –
I married a 19 year old girl(I was 23). You are right, you cannot tell young people anything, Things were good, had two kids, then things gradually soured starting in the 14th year. Divorced in the 17th year. But I have no regrets about taking that path of marriage, kids and divorce.
And my kids do not listen to their parents just as we paid little mind to ours when we supposely grew up.
Skipping Woodstock: In university when my buddy suggested going to Woodstock for a music festival, I demurred, thinking, “What kind of music festival can Woodstock have(thinking Woodstock NB)? Fiddling?”
I wasn’t too swift back then. After the weekend of the event I realized what the hell he was talking about. Always regretted that but it does not really qualify as a major decision fork in the road. Then again, who knows? Well, I did go see the movie as soon as it came out.
Deciding to apply for an education abroad program in my second year of university. I didn’t take it that seriously, and decided to apply on a lark to see where I’d be sent. Little did I know that I’d spend nine of the next ten (amazing and challenging) years studying and working in California.
It was a great environment in which to spend my 20s, but that lifestyle and career really enabled me to understand what I didn’t want to do with my life in the long term. And it really made me appreciate Canada in a way I hadn’t before.
Going for my divemaster certification.
A real turning point since it was the first relatively significant thing I did solely for myself. I had a sudden realization that I had spent most of my life outside of the picture, admiring it, treasuring it, but as something for other people. That little act made me go into the picture, and I got it. I understood how “alive” feels. The difference of observing life and being engaged in it. And that doing things for ourselves is also important.
Nice topic!
I joined the Armed Forces when I was 17. I was still in high school and working in a resteraunt part-time. I had no interest in going to university. I was a great student, I just didn’t see myself doing 4 more years of school. Being a 17 year old kid, the thought of blowing shit up for living sounded adventurous. It also turned out I was really good at it.
When I was going overseas for the first time, I saw my buddies saying goodbye to their families and girlfriends and I was determined to never go through that greif and stress. Both because i didn’t think it was fair to put someone else through that and I didn’t want to be doing my job all the while worrying about a Wife and kids back home. So I never let myself get attached to anything I couldn’t leave in a second. it never bothered me then, but looking back there were a lot of missed opportunities.
Then there were the deployments. Croatia, Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda. The experiences left me disilussioned, pessimistic and angry at the world. Spent a good chunk of my thirties self-medicating myself looking through the bottom of a scotch bottle. I still loved the job though.
The skills I developed there, turned me into the person i am now, disiplined, analytical, responsible, organized, and unshakable. Which has helped make me a success in my current career. Those qualities and my scars are what originally attracted my wife to me. Chicks dig scars I guess. I’m not going to argue. She’s way out of my league and she has made me an incredibly happy man.
Looking back, I probably wouldn’t have done it. I think I would have been much happier if i had just stuck with cooking. I would have been an incredible chef.
Quitting blogging.
Dude. That’s a road TAKEN.
OK. So I’m not going to take the easy way out…like Dr Dawg did
…. and say it was the day I met my BFF. Because in my case at least it was more like a car crash. But I do have this little story.
I was twelve and I was just getting ready to leave school, on a blustery winter day. I looked out of the window and I saw that a bunch of bullies had surrounded a small fat kid on the other side of the fence. One of them crouched behind him, another pushed him over, and the contents of his school bag spilled into the slushy snow. I waited until the bullies left because I was afraid of them. Then I went down and helped the bullied kid. He was OK but his beloved stamp book had fallen into a puddle, and he was desperately trying to dry them with his sleeve and his tie. But it was the sad helpless look on his face that bothered me the most. That night I wished I had been brave enough to rush down and tell those bullies to take a hike. Two days later I signed up for judo classes. It was just a small thing. I had seen injustice and bullying before. But that was the first time I had done anything about it. And it did change my life….
I went to Cozumel with 3 other girls when I was about 22 yrs old. We met 4 guys from Texas who all had liveaboard fishing boats and ran charters, and we partied with them day & night and had a total blast.
Then when our 2 weeks was up, the guys wanted us to stay. You know, just rip up our return tickets and *stay*. The guy I was with said I could live on his boat and help him with the business, and when the season was over I could go back to Texas with him. I was usually up for adventure, but this was way too weird — the “ripping up my ticket and staying” part I could sort of handle, but staying with someone I hardly knew, then going to some other strange place with that person… mayday! mayday! If all this had happened 5 years later, I might have stayed, but I was just too young and paranoid. So, I returned to Toronto, but… one of my friends stayed! She ended up marrying the guy she was with, and living in Texas.