Looking Back and Going Forward

A couple of weeks ago on a Friday night I was hanging out at home. It was a quiet evening, Isabella was at a sleepover, Zoe and Noah were downstairs watching a movie and Brent was doing freelance on his computer. I went on the other computer and was just messing around and started watching old '80's music videos and such. It was a fun trip down memory lane. I saw my teenage crush Howard Jones in videos and performing at the Live Aid concert, which then took me to watching U2 at the Live Aid concert. I was struck at just how many variations of the mullet there were back then. It wasn't just the Billy Rae Cyrus types. I went on to watch old Erasure videos, another modern music group I devoted many hours of my life to back then. I never saw any Erasure videos back then because I didn't have cable for the most part of my teenage years and Erasure was a bit off the beaten path for the popular late night '80's show "Friday Night Videos". I thought it was funny how the way they danced in the video "Sometimes" was the same way I danced back then. I was really into going out dancing back then and people used to comment on my "unique style". That all ended of course when I met Brent and he held firm on his strong anti-dancing position. Anyway I ended my Youtube viewing with Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" video. I noticed in the video the car going past a gas station, where gas was a mere $1.40 a gallon. Oh the good old days! And I was remembering when that video came out I was a junior high student in Pocatello, Idaho. Which strangely, or not, I remember as having much "cooler" teenagers than the teens I knew in high school in Sandy, Utah. So I was talking to Brent about the "good old days". Brent didn't seem to think they were "the good old days". He said he wouldn't go back and I said I would. Of course only if I was transported back in time and I could do it all over again retaining all the knowledge I have now. This always leads to the conversation about what we would do if we could go back in time. How we would be rich because we would invest in Microsoft and sell at just the right time and we would meet up at the appropriate time, get married, have our kids and all that with extra money and knowledge to boot. Discounting the Microsoft investments that would make us rich I told him I would go to college for a very long time and get extensive degrees. I wouldn't worry so much about the stupid things like going into debt because of student loans. If I knew then what I know now I'd know it would have been worth it to go into debt and I would be able to pay for it and I wouldn't live in fear of the unknown because of some crazy rationale that the world was going to end. I'd have the confidence to know I am capable of more than I thought I was back then. So Brent says to me "Why don't you just live that way now". Saying to me basically I don't have to take a trip back in time to accomplish my goals. That was sort of one of those "aha moments". I hate that expression but for lack of a better way to describe it, that's sort of what it was. I do live my life in fear of the unknown too much, with too much self doubt. So I am working on that. I'm going to try to make the most of this time on earth. I don't get to go back, this is my one shot and I've got to try to make the most of it.