Years Later Second Guessing Still

Two Road Diverged

Forty-0ne years ago today I started to work for San Bernardino County.  I spent the first four years with the Department of Public Social Services.  In '84  I went to work with the Public Guardian/Public Administrator's office, where I spent the next 25 years for a total of 29 years, four months, four days and four hours (approximately).  I laugh that I figured that out, but it is pretty much accurate.  It was a career I guess.

Now, going on twelve years in retirement, (I did retire young they say), I look back and still wonder if I did the right thing.  I stayed even when many times I wanted desperately to leave.  It was a good job overall, and very interesting at times.  I dealt with people's lives and estates, trying to help those who couldn't help themselves or those who had no one else to wrap up their affairs.  I worked with some wonderful folks and we are still friends.  And of course there were some things I never got used to, like office politics and such, but overall, it was a choice I made to stay.

That all said, and after all this time, I still look back and wonder, "What if?"  What if I had pursued my real dreams?  What if I had more confidence in myself, believed in my talents and abilities and really lived the life I dreamed of?  As I kid and even into high school and college, I always thought I wanted to be one (or all) of the following:  teacher, writer, artist, bon-vivant.  And over the years I have dabbled in all of them.  And here I am, still second guessing myself.  For criminy sake.  

So here I am.  I earned a comfortable retirement.  Its the security I thought I needed to obtain.  At what price?  In the end, though, I am content.  I am doing fine.  And here I am getting back to writing again and working toward other artistic interests. As usual, life is a series of starts and sputters.  Here I am, starting again.  The second guessing is more of a musing these days.  Thank goodness it is not paralyzing any more!  But like the poem by Robert Frost,  it came to many a fork in the road...but I, I tended to take the road well travelled, which, of course, has made all the difference.

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The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

​Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.