10 things I wish I had done differently

1.  stayed at a  job before quitting , 11 yrs ago  (my asshole boss left a month later)  .
2.  didn't take a job where I wasn't assigned to do anything but show up and be black.
3.  ignored my high school guidance counselor who said I wasn't intelligent enough to be an architect. 
4.  approached my grandfather and aunts with my suspicion of being adopted while they were alive.
5.  didn't allow religion to come between me and the woman I can't get over.
6.  spent the money I won from a lawsuit about 15 yrs ago more wisely.
7.   listened when my sister said that my first love was cheating on me ( I ended up raising a son that wasn't mine).
8.   approached the girls I liked in high school ( I found out years later that a few of them wondered why I  never asked them out).
9.   said yes to calculus/trigonometry in junior high school.
10.   tried to get in to law school with my brother 22 yrs ago when he asked me to do so.

I wish that foresight was 20/20 as well as hindsight. I've made so many decisions that I've regretted ( #1,2,3,6, 9, 10). I've made a few that I still stand by. What I've realized, after the fact, is, that I am always asking God to get me out of a certain situation, instead of asking Him to protect me. With that particular underwriting job in question, my boss was the ultimate asshole to me, and I prayed for an  escape. Then I took the first job that said yes. It was a health consulting firm that did business for companies housed in the Twin Towers. I didn't realize until after I started, that I wasn't going to be doing what my fellow health consultants did. The money was good but my  boss had nothing for me to do for 2 yrs. I used to beg for  training or for work while my white counter parts had too  much work to do. I would come to the office everyday, shut the door, put on  D'angelo  and Jill Scott write poetry (check this one out) and buy things on Ebay and take naps until time for lunch, and take my time coming back.   My boss at the previous job quit a month later and my friends in the department said the new boss was so cool and so much better. So, I regretted escaping as quickly as I had done, and I regretted taking that consulting gig. My cowworkers at the consulting gig had no respect for me, and the rumour was that I didn't have to work and that they needed a person of color. In the position. Because of 9 11, I was fired and it took me 7 years to back on track careewise, to where I am, at the best job I've ever had. 

I deeply, deeply regret procrastinating when my brother graduated from college and he asked me to take the Lsat. Dude makes more than 3x my salary.

I wish that foresight was 20/20 as well as hindsight.