I find that as I have frequently made every mistake that it is possible to make, I have this backlog of experience that makes me more cautious about jumping into new situations, and have time for more of the fun stuff. As the old joke goes, when the learner asks the guru how he gained the ability to make good decisions he was told, "Wisdom." When he asked how the guru had gained this wisdom he was told, "Bad decisions."

Of course the fact that I have had formal training in OSHA, for our friends from away, the US Government program mandating better safety practices in the work place; management, accounting, psychology, and computer technology, and have worked as a safety technician, maintenance manager, and comptroller have exposed me to skills and practices that have to have made me a better personal manager, less apt to jump rashly into situations that I now have the ability to recognize have the potential to turn ugly in a quick hurry. This means that when I learn around the water cooler that the major department heads of a small but rapidly growing electronics company have decided it is fun to all pile into a convertible and drive down country roads at excessive speed, with separate individuals manipulating the brakes, clutch, shift, and accelerator, while the owner sits on the back of the front seat, steers with her feet, and directs the efforts of the others who are well down below the dashboard level; I can recognize the crippling loss to the company when they have their inevitable accident, so have a quiet word to the company's two owners, themselves heavy duty party people, too.

And the really odd thing is that I received most of this formal and practical education over 26 years in the US military, mostly Air Force, not one of those high potential job opportunities out there, especially back during and after Viet Nam. This time taught me that I really didn't have to make the same mistake again, if I could only remember the consequences of the first time, and that if I perused the reports of how others made unfortunate choices, I could learn from their often fatal choices, and not have to experience that situation to learn from it.

Dave