What Ifs

A month ago I turned 41. The older I get the more I tend to reflect on the past; “what if I had...?” types of thoughts. Life is a series of choices. Sometimes we make the right choice and a lot of times we make the wrong choice.

What has me in this train of thought right now is some recent training at work. I do technical support, and, like any other technology, our product advances through hotfixes, patches and newer versions.  Because we have to support both the older and newer versions of the software until the older version reaches “end of support”, and the newer version is quite different, the two days of training was very beneficial (note, the new version actually came out last year and we’ve already been supporting it, but subtle [and sometimes not so subtle] differences between it and what most of us are familiar with usually results in having to seek assistance when troubleshooting). As I sat there trying to absorb as much information as I could, I couldn’t help but think back to a time when I wanted to be a programmer. It got me to thinking about all the stupid mistakes I’ve made in my life, especially in my 20s and wondering where I’d be now if I had finished that degree in ‘Business Computer Programming’ back in the early 90s.

Would I still have ended up living in Atlanta? Would I have ever had met my fiancee? Or any of the people I now count as some of closest friends? Would I still have the job I have now, or I would I have been one of the folks who wrote the software for the product I now to support for?

It’s been said that hindsight is 20/20. For some things that may be true, but one thing's for sure - you can’t go backwards and you certainly can’t start regretting decisions made 20 years ago. I like my life, I love my fiancee and my friends. I like my job (usually). I like where I live. And I suppose that that’s really what matters now. I doesn’t matter what happened way back when; what’s important is where I’m at, and the opportunities to move forward.

~ JC