The Things You Didn't Do

image thanks to everythingfab.com

My old boss Frank used to say something to the effect of (and I've quoted him here on my blog), "you'll only regret the things in life you didn't do." Maybe he was quoting Mark Twain. He was a remarkably supportive man and I'm very, very grateful for the time spent in his company. When I moved to The Palace in London, my next boss, Jim, was so much like Frank, it was uncanny. He too used to tell me to just go for it and take the plunges I feared so much. He was actually the first one to say it out loud, "Well then, I guess you're moving to Korea." That was in January of last year.

Suffice it to say that I've met some pretty incredible men in my life and I'm so happy to have taken their knowledge and stowed it away for future use (if it's not too cliche to stick with this nautical theme).

I'm going to quote the Tragically Hip now because I'm Canadian, it's what we do, and because I just like them. Wheat Kings says,

Twenty years for nothing
Well that's nothing new
Besides,
No one's interested in something you didn't do.

...They add, "You can't be fond of living in the past
Cause if you are then there's no way that you're gonna last."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though sometimes I might think too much about the future, at least I'm not stuck in the past. At least I'm moving on, was forced to move on, moved away in fact to get away from the past.

And that's something.

I have to tell a rather funny, somewhat unrelated (but hilariously connected) story about my mom and her husband, Doug. Doug got a sailboat last year and the two of them took classes to become sailors. It's super cool that Doug graduated as a captain and my mother as a skipper (? Is that right? Mom, are you a skipper?). They took the boat out on their own for a trip around the Bay in Burlington. She capsized (the boat, not my mom. Well, in essence, so did my mother, but I'm specifically referring to the boat here).

The way my mother tells this story, they were battling twenty-foot waves, bitter cold, and life-taking undercurrents. Truth be told (as they later found out), the water was only about hip-deep. So you can imagine The Mother Hen chirping like a maniac in the harbour, garnering all this attention from passersby (god, when I first heard this story, I was totally enthralled, scared stupid because I thought she nearly drowned), when finally she realized she could stand up. In the end, she (the boat) was fine, and so were the sailors. A little battered and done for the season, but fine.

Hey, not all nautical disasters are really all that disastrous. Some of them are just tales to tell around the dinner table. And we laugh and we learn and we move on. Here's to moving on.

Have a wonderful day.