I wish I knew then...

I guess part of getting older is gaining perspective on things, on life. There aren't a lot of decisions I've made that I regret, but, given the chance, there are a lot of things I would have done differently.

I feel like I've done a great deal of changing lately, and most of it, I hope, is for the better. Don't get me wrong, I've got a long way to go and I have no intentions of ever stagnating, but I'm starting to see things with a broader perspective. Maybe I'm just late in developing. I know a lot of people who changed dramatically in college and then that was who they were/are. I don't know. It's just that lately the little things that would have previously bothered me haven't seemed like such a big deal.

I had a really horrible experience with a co-worker during a training that I was running the other day. Three years ago (when I did trainings for a living), it probably would have crushed me, or made me implode, I'm not sure which. And while I still had to tell people all about the details after it happened, and I'm harboring a fair amount of distrust for this person, it didn't impact my life with the magnitude it would have previously.

About a month ago, my co-ed softball team played in an all-night tournament. It's a very long story, but in brief, our pitcher got drunk off his ass and embarassed the entire team by throwing a temper-tantrum on the mound and then walking off in the middle of an inning and hitting everything he could get to with a softball bat. There were other things that went on as well, but without that catalyst, they would not have ruined the evening. I do wish that I had handled myself with more composure when it was actually happening, but maybe that, too will come. The great part is that I just quit playing with them (I finished out the tournament, but I'm not playing in our league anymore). And while this may sound childish, it's not. It's great. It doesn't matter to me. I'm not mad anymore; I'm not angry at our pitcher. I just don't want to be associated with a team that acts like that because it's not who I am. Suddenly, winning a stupid softball game doesn't seem so important. So I quit.