Things that make you go "Ewww"

As you go about your business in life, there are various things that happen which will change the direction you travel. I'm talking about things that are a little (or a lot) under your own control. Whatever happens, you will have made a choice, and you may now be on a different road. The different road may or may not still contain the same possibilities in your future. If your future possibilities have changed, it is likely that you have gone though a major life event. Apart from things on the horizon now looking different from before, your thinking and attitude may have changed as well.

This page is about the life events which I have experienced and how they have changed me.

Choosing to leave school at 16

Although I had a scholarship (which paid for all my books and provided a small allowance as well), I chose to leave school and get a job at the end of year 11. My main motivation at the time was that as my father kept the allowance money and drank it down the pub, I wasn't going to support his habits! Effectively, I told myself I was leaving school to teach him a lesson. The consequences are that although I've done a fairly large number of short courses, I still don't have a formal qualification. Granted, I could go back part time and get a piece of paper that says I am qualified for something, but it is harder to get into study when you've been away from it for a while.

I am mildly successful in what I do. However, I was until recently gravely concerned that I would be retrenched following an organisational restructure. Although a retrenchment might include a bit of cash from a severance package, the lack of a qualification to include on my resume plus my age were sure to dramatically reduce my prospects for getting to interview stage for another job.

The lesson I'd suggest from this - It might seem tough and like the only option at the time, but try to figure out what the longer term consequences will be from any action that you take. If I were doing it again, I'd tough it out at home and make sure I got through some more schooling.

Getting married at 19

If it's the best thing you've ever know that you are sharing with another person, it must be love, mustn't it?

I just met the best thing that had ever happened to me (I thought), but her parents were about to move the family way out into the country - what was I to do? More...

Leaving your marriage

After a volatile two years together, I finally walked out on my first marriage. I'd been held there for a while with my wife threatening to kill herself if I left, but I finally had to turn my back on her threats and let her take responsibility for her own actions.

It took me a long time to come to the only logical thing to do and to this day I'm still not proud of breaking the 'til death do us part' vow, but I don't think I'd have retained my sanity if I'd stayed in the marriage that Jane and I had. More...

Assuming "right of way" on a motorbike

The idea behind road rules is that they provide some sort of order and give every road user as equal an opportunity to get to their destinations as the next person.

Even though there are stop signs and traffic lights, there is another rule which reads something like "Approach every intersection at a speed whereby you can stop to avoid a collision". I reasoned (with myself) that if I travelled at that sort of speed, I might as well just walk. More...

Dying

What happens when your heart stops beating? Is it just like going to sleep (forever), or is there something else? Are there bright lights or anything else like that? The night after my motorbike crash I died and needed to be revived. These are my recollections of those five minutes in time. More...

Being in a coma

I was in a coma for six days after my motorbike crash. You may see various movies and get theatrical representations of what it is like to be a family member waiting for your loved one to wake up. Does someone in a coma actually know that you're there? More...

Don't settle for someone you don't love

As I was pretty banged up from a major motorbike crash (bits missing, scars all over me and a bad limp, and probably a bitter attitude for the "lousy hand life dealt me"), I guessed that no one could ever truly love me again. As I was so unworthy of love, I would have to settle for someone that had stuck by me through all the tough times!? Bad choice! She mightn't have run away at first, but she did end up running away.

Lesson - It doesn't matter too much what you look like. There are a whole stack of people out there that search for the inner person that they will love. They know that looks are only for a short number of years, and after that there needs to be something more. So if you focus on being a healthy thinking, positive, happy person, you'll probably find that you attract similar people to yourself!

Choosing to become an amputee

No, this is not a case of looking for surgically assisted "self-mutilation" or "bodily modification". It was a case of trying to get to an improved quality of life though.

My right foot had been caught between the bike and the car and got crushed quite badly in a motorbike crash. The various surgeons of the day did all their "magic" and told me I should be happy that they'd saved it for me. In order to save it, they took chunks out of the rest of me, and caused lots of additional scarring on my body. As well as that, my foot was totally useless and gave me continual pain. I did the rounds of another set of specialists and was told to learn to live with it. More...

Being a guarantor for a loan

Back when I had a few dollars in the bank and had my own house (the first time), one of the guys I worked with needed a car in order to do his job. As he had no previous history which would support his application for a car loan, he needed a guarantor. He supposedly had no close members of his family that were in a position to be guarantor for him. I had some reliance on him being able to do the job, so I decided to go guarantor.

He got his car and all was well. A short while later, I moved interstate and lost contact with him. About two years later and debt collection people came chasing me down to recover their money! It seemed he had only ever made a single payment and then a series of excuses and then nothing. As his brother had a business, I managed to raise his brother and got him to relay a message to Darren. It seems that he had either made a payment or satisfied them with more excuses as they stopped hounding me.

Another couple of years later and I was in a position to be able to go for a home loan again. There in my credit history was this big bleak mark where it showed me defaulting on a loan (as guarantor). Again, I had to track down Darren via his brother's business to sort this out.

Lesson - Unless you know someone 100% (perhaps a child, sibling or even a parent) and have complete faith in them, or have no problem with paying from your own funds the amount you are guaranteeing, do not sign anything as guarantor!

Looking outside of your marriage for affection

Perhaps a marriage is already doomed when one of the partners comes to the other saying, 'I need affection and closeness in my life, and if I can't have it with you, I guess I'll need to look outside of our relationship'.

It's bad enough that one party has got to thinking and then voicing that there's a big chunk of the relationship that is missing, but when the response is, 'If that's what you need to do, then that's what you need to do'...

I was deeply in love with my wife, but she was getting busy with her own social life and outings with girlfriends, etc. I worked long hours trying to earn better money to build a better life for us and when I was away from the office I used to cherish my time with my wife. It turned out that my wife was never home when I was, and I had to book her at least 2 weeks in advance to spend some time with her.

As we didn't spend much time together any more, I guess I might have been a bit fixated on getting sexual with her.

Things continued this was for some time until someone in the office started to take an interest in me. I came home and told my wife that another woman was showing some interest in me.

My wife suddenly became available all the time and was more than eager to please me. Such was the transformation that she became alien to me. More...