Choices and decisions

Every choice, every decision you make today will affect you at some point in your future. Whether it is good or bad, it will affect you. I would like a “redo” button on my phone for this. I wonder if there is an app for that.

We have all made choices and decisions that we thought were good at the time or just didn’t think at all about them. I have had a couple that came back to bite me in the ass. Others have been the best decisions I could ever make.

When I bought the fabric store in 1998, I thought it was the best decision for me and my boys. I was a single mom and felt the store would be the gravy for the potatoes. A month into it I thought “what the hell did you do?” I had made drapery and bedding and all the other “fluff” stuff for your home in my home for 10 years. I could take off when I wanted and work as late as I needed. I was home for my boys when they got home from school, with plenty of time for homework and a good dinner. I now had to “go to work”, and stay there for a specified amount of time. The spontaneous, “come on boys! Lets go to the beach!” days were over. All of the licenses permits and taxes were a real wake up call. If you have ever owned a business, you know what I am talking about.

Closing that chapter in my life has been a smart thing. My stress level is almost nill, and I get to go to lunch again for the first time in 12 years. I had forgotten how much eating out costs and how much weight you can gain from eating like this. Darlene laughs at me because at 10 a.m.I will say,”OH! We need to go to (whatever) restaurant today!” That is a choice that has to change. I’m not a fan of the weight gain and the lost money.

The decision to get rid of the TV has had a positive impact on my life. I’m not stressed or worried because of the news anymore nor do I get mad at all the commercials. If there is something I genuinely want to see, I can view it on my laptop. I haven’t yet, but I can. The lady I moved in with cut her cable off five years ago after her husband died. She didn’t even know that Prince William was getting married.

The decision finally to make my dream a reality has been an agreeable one so far.(www.facebook.com/backtrax2011) I don’t know how it will affect me in the future, but for now, it is a positive one. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback and people tell me all the time how jealous they are. I’m not looking to make anyone jealous; I just want the word to get out. The more people who know about this the better chance I have to make the stories great.

I haven’t always made the best choices in my life and those that truly know me are shaking their heads in agreement. Choices that I made in haste or thought that they “sounded fun” at the time have been mistakes. I am the kind of person that has to learn from mistakes. I will not take your word for it; I have to learn on my own.

My oldest son made the decision to get tattoos. A lot of tattoos. I told him one day he would not be in the army and would have to get a real job. I told him that he would have a hard time getting a decent job because he could not cover up all the tattoos. He has told me that I was right about this. Hopefully my youngest has learned from his brothers mistakes. That is a choice that can’t be undone without a lot of money and pain.

I don’t know if I have made this realization too late or at a young age. All I can say is I try to think about what I am about to do and how it might affect me and those around me in the future. We will never know how things will work out, we can only hope we make the right choices and decisions for ourselves and those around us.

This is my journey…