Squandered Opportunities

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I relate to a lot of the self-blaming stuff mentioned eloquently above by others, thank you everyone for your thoughts on this I enjoyed reading it.

I think I've missed opportunities for friendship, and squandered opportunities to keep friends due to how hard I find it to trust people, solving this one is an on-going challenge for me.

However, my life experience so far is opportunities are not just something you get once, they keep coming along. You'll miss some it's true, but they do come along again and sometimes you just need to jump on them and hold on tight as they go past.

Sometimes this means you may need to do something that intially feels a bit scary, but my personal experience is it often works out really well.

For those of you who regret not studying further, there are ways of going back to school and my personal experience is it can be a really good thing...there are increasingly modular online courses courses offered by Universities and colleges which can be quite easy and cheap to access, so you can build up qualifications over time and begin to get into work / activities you really want to do.

Last year I managed to get part of a trip to America paid for because I was doing a conference presentation there...it was a great experience.

I never would have belieived that would happen at the time I was leaving a job due to massive stress problems at age 27, then I thought my career might be over, that I might be working part-time in administration for the rest of my life and this was the most I could achieve, that I'd wasted my degreee qualification and post-degree training...I was wrong...and importantly I did not give up hope that things might work out for the best in the end.

I'm struggling a bit at the moment, but I can also reflect on the fact that I've bounced back before, and with increased skills, knowledge and understanding I can get better at doing this.

I sometimes think that if I could do things over I'd take the job I could have had when I got out of reform school but realistically I know I couldn't have managed it.

When I first got out my mother worked at a fast food place and had a boss that would hire you just for being attractive, young, and female. A few years later when I did apply and did an interview it was a different boss and they didn't hire me.

My other missed opportunity was when Jerry Springer did a show in my city and I didn't go. It was my only chance to ever be in a Jerry Springer audience and see the show live.

Some opportunities are better missed, and Blownmind's post reminded me of this. There were women I maybe could've been with, but I'm not sorry. Maybe there were some that wanted me that I'm still not aware of, and maybe one or more of them would've been great. But I've had reason, because of something I recently learned about someone, to think yet again of how glad I am that I've trusted my body with very few people. It's no guarantee of safety, but it seems to have served me well so far.

As for opportunities I took in various ways, I got my GED after I dropped out of high school. Not that I've done much with it, but I at least did it and probably benefited from having it during my short work history. I got out there and kept meeting people, then took a chance on a relationship that has now lasted almost 12 years. I grabbed onto a chance to learn to drum, and I've been playing for belly dancers for around a decade. So, when I feel down and like a disappointment, I have good things to look at to counteract that. I recommend taking that kind of look at yourself for anyone. It's a lot healthier than always looking at the misses and failures, buying into other people's judgments all the time.

I think about those times a lot as well but the best thing to do is learn from those past mistakes and move forward with experience under your belt.