the screaming pages

Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” suggests that the choices we make can radically change the lives we lead.

I know where my fork in the road lay. When I met my husband in 3rd year university, I was faced with the choice of continuing our relationship as a long distance relationship, or joining him in traveling from base to base – leaving my studies behind. We eloped, I spent my 3rd year in Fredericton while he moved from CFB Gagetown (New Brunswick) to CFB Borden and CFB Kingston (Ontario). I didn’t register for 4th year and walked away from University to follow my husband in his career.

What was the impact? Other than not finishing university until nearly a decade later, I spent years travelling the country, world and working in a field I had never known existed while studying French and History. I have an inkling that my career would be radically different had I continued on the path I’d set out on after leaving high school.

I doubt I would have spent any time in India – which radically modified my outlook in life – had I not begun working for the company I do. And I wouldn’t be working for the company I do had we not been transferred from a base in Ontario to CFB Winnipeg (Manitoba) in 1998.

Would I be married or have children if I’d made different choices? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that if I could go back and do it all again, I hope I’d have the strength and presence of mind to make the same decision a second time around. My life would have been radically different had I not met my husband when I did but I don’t believe that different automatically equals better.

The past decade has been a bit of a roller coaster ride, but I wouldn’t want to change a thing. As Garth Brooks croons “I could have missed the pain, but I’d of had to miss the dance“.

Did you reach a fork in the road and choose a path that may have changed the course of your life? What do you think the impact of that choice was?

Technorati Tags: Robert Frost, Garth Brooks, choices, marriage, military

My Thursday Thirteen list included a reference to needing to visit my dentist. I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps someone from their office doesn’t read my blog since this morning I received a phone call to remind me that I need to make an appointment for my bi-annual check-up and cleaning. Very nice of them to remind me of my upcoming need to visit my favourite torturer. Granted, the timing of the call was excellent and I now have an appointment scheduled for Jan 18th.

Note: My current dentist is actually a really nice guy and does his best to put me at ease. I had a horrific childhood dentist who scarred me for life and every one who’s come after has had to work hard to gain my trust.

Technorati Tags: dentist, teeth

While visiting Pointless Drivel earlier today, I came across a link to Laurianne’s Hope.

What is Laurianne’s Hope? Lynda, Laurianne’s sister, describes the blog’s mandate as:

…to share my sister’s story with the world and help raise her son to be the person she wanted him to be. Laurianne died of non-smoking related lung cancer on October 22, 2005. She was only 25 years old, and I miss her every day.

This blog is written by Laurianne’s father, hankon, and Laurianne’s sister, Lynda. We hope to educate people about this disease by sharing our feelings about our loss and information about lung cancer.

How can you help?

People who find Laurianne’s Hope read about my sister, Laurianne. There are a lot of other stories out there, and I think the voices of those we have lost need to be heard as well. Lung cancer can spread so quick, that we as the loved ones need to help share their story.

You can share your own story with Lynda by sending an email to laurianneshope [at] gmail.com (replace the [at] with @).

Technorati Tags: cancer, Laurianne, lung cancer, share a story

As if she had second sight, Susan over at West of Mars recommended I get a pedometer leash in her comments from yesterdays Thursday Thirteen post.

This afternoon I put my hand in my pocket and almost lost my pedometer. I had attached it to my pocket since I wasn’t wearing a belt. After realizing it was missing, my co-worker and I retraced our steps twice in a desperate search to find it. She had once again forgotten hers and was curious as to how many steps we had to take in our search. Just as I had given up, I turned and the pedometer fell to the ground. She was convinced I’d tucked it in my pocket just to force us to walk longer and get a higher step count.

I think I really do need that leash after all!

Technorati Tags: pedometer, walking, leash

I have a tonne of links in my bookmarks at work that I haven’t visited in a while. I spent a few minutes today perusing the ones I’d assigned to my Learning Styles folder when I came across an article outlining why it’s important for students to understand their professors learning styles and vice versa. From it, I followed a link to David Keirsey‘s work.

On his site, Mr. Keirsey has posted an article titled Different Drummers.

If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.

Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.

Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.

Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you.

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offsping, your friend, or your colleague. If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And in understanding me you might come to prize my differences from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences. (Keirsey, 1998, Please Understand Me II)

These words describe exactly how I’m feeling at the moment. Unfortunately, the person who really needs to be reading this wouldn’t recognize themselves if handed the mirror.

Technorati Tags: David Keirsey