Reflective time of year

During the last week of the year I have gotten in the habit of looking back on the past year and doing some self evaluation. Looking back at the year and reviewing what happened and what  situations could I have  handled better. And in doing this I hope to be able to grow as a person.

When I have had moments of doing this the last couple of days a phrase has continually come to my mind.

I don't know when I first heard the phrase "Youth is wasted on the young" and I can't remember who I first heard say it. But I remember  thinking it was "ha ha" funny.  Now I think of it as "things that make you say aha" funny. To me that phrase is one of the truest things I have ever heard.

I have heard people talk about their past and :"the road not taken"; and they always seem to think that if they had done things differently their life would have been better. As for me, I don't know if that is true.

There are lot of things that I would have done differently if I knew then what I know now. I know that if I had continued to use my leg braces after my mid 20's I would be better off physically now. That is the one major mistake that I  wish I could fix.

I tried going to higher education schools  three different times after high school. The first to times I didn't take it serious enough. The last time I did pretty well but I had a lot of other  stuff going on.

Yes, in some ways  I definitely would be better off with the education. But I might have missed some life lessons that helped make me a better person.

And there is a woman who I knew in Tampa who I was real infatuated with that actually asked me to be her boyfriend. I have absolutely zero idea why I said no. I wanted to say yes so badly and I know that  my life would be a lot different if I said yes.

But I believe I am right where I should be. And I try to remember that nothing is really good or bad. I say that because I learned more about life and more about me through going through the bad stuff which actually makes it good stuff.

I guess the best thing to do is not waste the gift of getting older.