Whadda Mistekka To Make!

What a great feeling it is, to be living in the power of 'now'. I was thinking the other day about the various mistakes I've made along the way (and there have been some, let me tell you), and wondering how different my life might have been had I not made those mistakes. It's easy to live with regret sometimes but then on more careful reflection, one realizes that none of it really matters because none of it (the speculative scenarios, that is) happened, and so therefore there is absolutely no point in worrying about it. What happened, happened.

The very best we can do with our lives is to enjoy what we are doing now, and not to worry about how we got here. We should resolve, of course, to try to make sure that whichever highway stretches out before us, is the correct one - but there are no guarantees that it will be, of course. Start here, start now - it can be done. The road ahead is clear - we have nothing to hit but the heights (as the song goes).

What started me thinking about this was an entry I read in my diary - written when I was just seventeen. I am preparing to clear out all the detritus from my old house in readiness for selling it, and I came across a box of my old diaries in the attic. Fascinating stuff - but it's all in the past. This particular entry read: "I think I've decided what I want to do as a career. I want to be a journalist." You don't need me to tell you, gentle reader, that it never happened. However, a couple of years after the diary entry, and while I was still at university, I went for an interview with the Editor of the Nottingham Evening Post when I was at home on holiday. I can recall this incident with alarming clarity. I was on my way to the train station to return to Oxford and thought I'd do the interview before catching the train. As such, I had a small suitcase with me and, in my youthful exuberance, didn't think that it would matter that I was dressed in my student attire.

The Editor called me in to his shambolic office. He was a fat man, sweating in the smoke-filled room, and the skin covering his face was a glistening and translucent pink, and somewhat stretched. His first question to me was why I had thought it necessary to bring a small suitcase into an interview, and why also did I think it was appropriate to turn up in a T-shirt and jeans? His curt response and beady, cynical stare did little to reassure me when I explained to him that I was on my way back to university and therefore couldn't be bothered to put on a suit that wouldn't be worn again for months. Oh, the innocence of youth! He then went on to tell me how awful it would be to start as a trainee journalist - the hours were long and unsociable; the work largely unrewarding ('Do you think you could whip up sufficient enthusiasm for something like the Arnold & Redhill Flower Show?'). Then came the stinger: The salary was £4 per week. WTF? I had been earning £8 per week working as an assistant in a pet shop during my holidays - he must have seen the look of sheer incredulity upon my arrogant, university-educated face. I didn't realize at the time that he too had once started out at the bottom, and had probably started on a wage much less than £4 per week himself.

Without showing any enthusiasm whatsoever, I thanked him for his time and left to catch my train. And here's where the sorry tale becomes muddled and fruitless. I sat on the train thinking about how on earth anyone could manage on only half of what I'd been earning - even if (as would have been the case) I were living with my parents? No, I decided, he was taking the piss. Far better to stay on at university, get my degree, and forge a career for myself that was much better paid. I wasn't naive enough though, not to recognize that my lack of servility and my lack of passion for his profession would hardly have impressed him anyway, so I assumed that the choice had already been made. Imagine my shock when, a few days later, he rang to offer me the job. How desperate must he have been to fill the role? I declined, and forgot all about it.

How short-sighted we are when we are young! All I could think about was how (if I'd wanted to) I could earn double what he was offering, just by selling rabbits, mice and guinea-pigs to the unsuspecting unwashed of Nottingham. It never entered my immature and stupid head that journalistic training on a provincial newspaper is the bedrock of the craft upon which so many of our household media names have based their careers. All I could think of was that at that time, it cost £2 in the pub to get drunk, so how on earth was I going to survive on the wages I was being offered? Now, of course, it's difficult to resist the temptation to imagine 'What if...?' but as I've already said - it's useless to look back. Yes, my life would have followed a totally different route from the one I eventually followed, but such a thing is impossible to think about because the route I did take has brought me exactly to this point, now. Anything else, and I wouldn't be writing this.

We only have now, and followed by what is to become. Nothing else. Plain and simple. No regrets.