Chapter 22: If you had to go back in time and start a brand-new career, what would it be?

I don’t really like this question. To me, it sounds like I am not happy with my life now. I am very happy with what I am doing now and wouldn’t want to change it. I have been asked if there were things in my past that I would change besides my job career and I always answer, “No.” Of course, I have made mistakes and done things that I wish that I didn’t do, but all of these actions affected where I am, what I am doing and who my friends are now.

If I had gone to college, excelled in sports, etc., I would have associated with different people and would have never met the people I know now. I may have had a happy life knowing different people and having different friends, but I might not have been happy.

I know some people who say, “I should have done this” or “I should have done that.” We can’t change our past so there is no reason to worry about it. Just accept it and learn from mistakes made. Worrying causes stress and stress can cause illness or depression.

My favorite motto is “simple is best.” I believe that life is so simple, but so many people make it difficult. This will make them to think negatively which in turn will make them unhappy. I always try to be positive thinking. There have been times time that I had negative thoughts, but I usually get over it rather quickly. When I feel down, I just think of how lucky I actually am and that there are so many people with much bigger problems than me. That reminds me of a Mahatma Gandhi quote, “I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet."

The longest time that I felt negative/depressed was after Keiko passed away. She was taken to a local hospital where their tests said that she was brain dead. But the staff remembered that she had a different medical emergency about a year before. They believed that she would die from that emergency, but they sent her to the UW Medical Center in Seattle, and after a month or so, she was released from the hospital. Even though the tests showed that she was brain-dead, they decided to send her to the UW Med Center again. She was flown to the hospital in an emergency medical helicopter. When she arrived, the doctors quickly said that she was dead. The helicopter, ambulance and UW hospital costs were very high. I think that it was more that $50,000.

I have Tricare, which is a military health insurance. With this insurance I would have to pay no more than $2,000 per year. The local Tricare office said that my wife was covered by the insurance, but the main office in California said that she wasn’t. It took almost a year of arguing back and forth with the main office before they agreed that she was covered by Tricare. In the meantime, I was making some payments for the medical costs, but I didn’t have enough to pay for the $40,000 helicopter ride. Bill collectors were sending me letters saying that they would take me to court and take my house in Seattle, take money directly from my retirement check and ruin my credit rating.

I went to bed every night for a year with nightmares about my situation. When I got up in the morning, I blocked everything from my mind. I had classes to teach and didn’t want to depress my students by being negative and complaining. In the end, Tricare paid for most of the costs. It got down to they still owed me about $2,000. Every time I sent them paperwork to get reimbursed, they would write back saying they needed more paperwork. By chance, I was visiting my daughter when I got another letter saying they need more information. I was a little angry to say the least, but my daughter said, “Dad, it’s not worth the stress and your mental health to continue worrying about it.”  With those wise words, I blocked it out and never worried about it again.

So, I know that it is sometimes hard to not be negative, but now I again quickly become positive and remember that other people have much greater problems than me.

Again, I digress and got totally off-topic about what other career I would choose if I could go back in time. While writing about that, so many other stories just pop into my head. I often do this when talking with my friends about my life as a child or my military life. One story reminds me of another story, and another, and another. I think that my life has been rather normal. But what is normal?