They say we learn from our mistakes, and that's true, but sometimes, we don't have time for reflection.
A mistake can really cost us all that we've built our life up to be. it can really cause things to take a down turn for the worse in such a way that our lives forever change from that moment. It's definitely a learning experience-a very high-stakes one.
u/SethNKelly asked:
What was a life-changing mistake you made?
Here were some of the answers.
Career Vs. Love
Giphy
Quitting a great job with huge advancements when I was 19 because a girl, the job took me out on the road for 2-3 weeks at a time and I didn't want to leave her for that long at the beginning of our relationship. Dang that was dumb. It took me 8 years to make that much money again, and that girl dumped me after 5 months of dating.
The Van Could Have Killed You
Heading home after a nice motorcycle ride on a Sunday evening. Decide on a whim to take a small 10 minute detour because it was one of the last days of the year with nice weather.
Crashed into the side of a van with 80 km/h that didn't give me the right of way. Spent 12 days in intensive care, ended up with persistent health problems and a reconstructed shoulder which left me partially disabled and unable to do sports, lift anything serious, etc.
It was a nice ride though!
It All Worked Out In The End
In my mid 20s I was dating and living a wonderful woman, but I was extremely immature and did a terrible job of keeping my life in order and keeping up decent employment. She gave me so many chances to get my stuff together, but time and time again I would just be a useless lump and she eventually broke up with me and kicked me out. I had to go live with my parents.
I completely changed after that. Video games became something I did after all my responsibilities were met, not something that kept me from them. I stopped smoking for a while so I could land a reliable job (even though the one I found ended up not drug testing me). I started saving money because I couldn't stand living with my parents...
Eventually my ex and I reconnected and we eventually moved back in together. We ended up getting a new place that was ours (I had moved in to her place) and things just kept getting better. We're now married and homeowners, and I'm waiting to hear about and even better job opportunity. It's a shame we had to come to that for me to get my stuff together but it changed my life.
My Friend Judas
In the mid 2000s I used to work a call centre job while finishing up uni. It was a startup fintech type job. People got promoted quickly and they paid above minimum wage. But I was naive and didn't realize how backstabby some people could be to get ahead.
I carpooled with who I thought was a friend until he started secretly recording our conversations in the car to curry favor with my managers. Thinking I was safe I was honest about my feelings about certain things at work and sure enough he played the recordings to my bosses and soon after I noticed a change In how I was being treated.
They let me go with severance when I caught on to the fact that I was being asked to train my replacement.
This led to about 10 months of unemployment with employment insurance and me finding a much better paying job. It was a blow but I learned from it and I'm glad I'm not stuck in what is ultimately a dead end call centre job, no matter how they spin job titles.
The Cycle Of Capitalism
Not ever taking the time to sit down and think particularly hard about the career I wanted or how to realistically go about getting it before I went to college.
9 years and one liberal arts degree later, I'm not using said degree at all, and I'm working in an office at a job not at all related to what my degree is in, nor what I desire to do. I want to go back to school, but I need money. I need to go to school to do what I want to and to make money, but I need money to go back to school.
MS Paint Is Never The Answer
When I was fresh out of school with a useless degree in creative writing and no experience, in the middle of the recession, I interviewed to be a Marketing Coordinator for a local fishing resort/marina that was also headquarters for a few dozen vacation resorts along the west coast. Pay was great, job perks included free travel and food/accomodation at any of these resorts and a fairly freeform job in creating print and web ads, blog material, doing some market research and interviews. It sounded super fun. I aced the interviews and felt like a shoe-in based on how they were talking to me. I prepared for my life of luxury.
They asked me to just throw together a quick ad concept. I was staying at my girlfriend's house when the request came in and she didn't have Adobe CS, so I threw something together quickly in Paint, yes Paint, kind of assuming it didn't really matter since it was just a concept. It was terrible. They went silent, I didn't get the job, and I faced a difficult few years of racking up credit card debt, digging up freelance work, and mass-applying to jobs that never contacted me back.
I'm doing okay now, but I always wonder what things would be like if that had worked out.
Far Across The Distance And Spaces Between Us
Breaking up with a girl I dated in college. I thought it wasn't working, turns out she found out she had some serious medical stuff going on that she just didn't want to burden me with. I thought she was just getting distant because she was disinterested.
Found out years later. Turns out she actually really liked me and - for various reasons I won't go in to here - we were "perfect" for one another according to some mutual friends.
She's went on to get the medical stuff fixed/managed. Unfortunately also fell in to drugs and alcohol abuse and is no longer in a good place. Wish I'd have stayed and helped her through it all.
Failure
Short explanation of the school system here: We have 6 grades in one school building and grade 7-9 in another building. Grade 1-6 is the same for everyone, while 7-9 has two different kinds of difficulties. Rather easy and pretty difficult. Nothing in between.
To my story, as I finished the 6th grade, I was one of the lucky people to choose to which difficulty I was about to go in. I, being as incompetent as I am, choose the hard way. And... Well, I didn't make it. I was planing on taking on the easier way anyway, but still. And because of that, people looked down on me. Telling me that I'm way too stupid (I only failed because of 2 points, I think).
To say it short, I regret taking the hard way.
Hear That? It'll Rot Your Brain
Honestly? League of Legends. I sank in 5.5 years of my life into it since 2012. I started to care less about school and my health. All I wanted to do was come home and play LoL.
I met some incredible people through it, but I ended up not being serious about a career until last year because I was such a slacker. I do still have a soft spot for it, but now I don't play as much and will get on every few months for an ARAM. There's better games out there.
When Debt Comes Knockin
Giphy
I bought a Wii U. I had just gotten a credit card for the first time, and thought I could pay it off in two months. (Reasonably though, I could have but things didn't work out that way). Next month I had to get a new car battery and replace a few parts, eating up what should have gone to paying the rest off.
Things got worse from there, I had to leave my job to be able to graduate college, then couldn't find a job for 8 months and living off of scraps a month and having to put more and more on a credit card. It didn't get any better for awhile, more things happened, I moved three times within a year, and now it's 4 years later. I'm just now starting to feel like I'm secure again.
It connects people, ideas, senses or humor, creativity! Yes, we've got our fair share of deviants, murderers, and trashbag people, but we've also got decades of wonder to celebrate.
Newbies like to think using the internet for awesomeness is something they came up with, but the old heads are here to tell you the internet has ALWAYS been a complicated crash course in the coolest stuff ever.
So let's hop in the wayback machine and get our nostalgia on.
Reddit user ransom0374 asked:
"What do you miss from early internet times?"
So let's take that walk down memory lane, or if you're new-ish here on planet Earth, this is going to be a fun little "history" lesson.
If you're uncertain where you fall, here's a test:
"Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger..."
If you finished the song, you're probably going to remember quite a few of these...
Away Messages
"AIM away messages saying stupid stuff like 'BRB going to get some bagel bites.' "
"Don't forget to update your personal profile with Blink 182 lyrics and the initials of your school sweetheart and some ASCII. Browse for a new inappropriate buddy icon and strike up a convo with SmarterChild"
GiphyThe Unknown
"I miss the wild unknown frontier that the internet was."
"It seemed there was so much discovery to be had on the internet, and if you were good at the internet everyone thought of you as 'Hackerman' and you were like a God amongst your peers."
"It seems like there isn't anything 'new' on the internet anymore. No discoveries to be made."
GiphyThe Irony Is Not Lost On Us
"Variety. There's a popular tweet that says something like 'the internet has turned into four websites where on each one people share screenshots of the other three.' "
"I miss when you could search a term and there would be dozens of sites dedicated to it or forums especially for it. Now it's just ads, Wikipedia, and Reddit."
"Oh, and not having ads shoved down your throat every time you search a term or navigate to a page!"
"I know there were pop ups and banners, which weren't any better. But there was a sweet spot."
"There was a few years there where you could Google something and half the first page WASN'T sponsored ads that had nothing to do with what you looked up. And you could go to a website and it DIDN'T block the page with a full screen ad asking for your email to join their mailing list or save 10% on their merchandise."
GiphyFiguring It Out
"That all the webpages were just random people trying to figure out HTML."
"There really wasn't a corporate presence at all. It was just a place for people to experiment."
"You could click on a button and make a cardboard hand wave at someone's cats. You could dispense a coke from a machine in some dorm. It was dumb and fun."
GiphyEndless Learning
"The learning was endless."
"There were almost an infinite source of information from all over the world. If you wanted to find something all you had to do was search for it in Ask Jeeves or whatever and you'd find any website that had ever mentioned that thing."
"There were more than 10 different websites. And at least it didn't feel like I was being forced to sign up for a subscription after every click."
"There were so many fun, cute stores to shop. Now it feels like everyone dresses and decorates the same."
"I miss a lot of things about the early internet. I'm probably wrong, but it just felt safer than it does now?"
GiphyMaking Friends
"I was in my late teens when the internet was becoming accessible to everyone. Our one household computer was in the kitchen & facing in a way so anyone coming in could see your screen."
"I remember looking at someone's website and my Dad passing by to get something to eat, asking me if the person on the website was my friend."
"I miss those old days! The internet seemed endless & friendly."
GiphyA Base Level For Participation
"Most people were smart."
"In the early days (by far) most people on the internet were in college, either as a teacher or student. Beyond that, people had to to be in a lab or make their computer talk to a connected computer which was not so easy in the old days."
"It acted as a sort of intelligence barrier one needed clear to participate in internet things."
- tsoldrin
"Higher barrier to entry."
"I remember the fond days of SLIP and Trumpet Winsock when you had to know at least a little about tech to get on and participate."
"There was still stupidity, but it just wasn't as loud as it is now."
- dramboxf
"In the very very early days, pre-AOL, you needed skill and knowledge to get online."
"Then AOL came onto the scene an d anyone could get online at the push of a button."
GiphyGo Away Now
"I miss when what happened on the internet, stayed on the internet."
"You could turn off the beige box and go about the rest of your day without it affecting you."
"The fact that is only existed on a big computer in the house, as long as no-one was on the phone. It wasn't some all-encompassing thing."
- dienices
"The internet not following me around. When you logged off, you effectively put the internet away."
GiphyIt Used To Be...
"How people used to treat it."
"The internet was not just a novelty, but an amazing piece of technology that let anyone share anything. It was so wholesome and loving, with everyone still being amazed at what we could do now."
"Now? There's so many websites that are designed to make you angry and radicalize your beliefs. It's quantity over quality."
"There was a time when nobody on Reddit shared politics, when Facebook was for socializing, when YouTube was where people uploaded stuff they were passionate about."
GiphyWe Used To Love Yahoo
"Yahoo Answers"
"Yahoo Pool"
- inaclick
"I can't remember what it was called, but Yahoo had this great music video program where it showed popular artists, and some very unknown folks."
"I discovered some of my favorite artists having it play in the background all the time."
"Launchcast/Yahoo Radio. It was revolutionary for music streaming and the 1-5 star system worked really well. I preferred it over Pandora's up/down system."
GiphyOn a personal level, I want to go on record and say MusicMatch was the greatest music program in the history of life.
It just was.
I will die on this hill.
It was dopeness in all forms. MusicMatch Jukebox? Dope. Yahoo MusicMatch? Dope.
So what relics from Ye Olde Internet are you passionate about? Sound off in the comments!
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The dogs owner shared the video along with a post asking professionals to shed some light on why he does what he does.
Owner-obliviousness as they gushed about how adorable it was made the awkward even better.
The owner explained the Frenchie often makes aggressive eye contact and licks his lips while he "plays air guitar"—which is what the family calls it—and how cute & funny they all find the behavior.
GiphyThe video was the dog, casually chilling, using his paw to rub the tip of his penis while staring awkwardly at the camera and licking his lips like a pup possessed.
Three hundred and fifteen laugh-reacts—at the time that I saw it—and only three comments:
1. a vet explaining that the behavior showed in the video was the dog masturbating while making direct eye contact
2. the owner giving a simple "thank you" and
3. the admins of the group closing the comments.
So, why am I sharing this with you?
Because Reddit user Drakmamman asked:
"Dog owners of reddit, what the dog doin?"
... and so now you get this whole article just so I had an excuse to tell y'all about a furiously fapping Frenchie, 'cause somebody else needed to know about him.
I cackled for a good 20 minutes imagining the family getting all giddy about their dog "playing air guitar"—making the little air guitar meedly squeedly noises while he played, maybe even playing along thinking they're enjoying a fun little game—but they're really just been giving a hair metal soundtrack to their dogs stroke sesh.
Something tells me now the owner knows what "air guitar" really is, they're not likely to rush and tell Reddit all about how they've been gathering as a family to watch cause it's just so cute.
That's what I'm here for.
Anyway, here's the stuff other people's dogs are up to. It's not fapping—or if it is, the owners aren't telling Reddit.
Partner Preference
Giphy"Wife just came home with the baby. Dog is acting like she's been abandoned for years running up and down, barking and jumping on everything."
"They'd only been out an hour and I was with her the whole time." - Single_Goose7015
"My dog does this too when my wife comes home. Like what am I, chopped liver?" - jackof47trades
"I feel your pain. My dog started howling mournfully when my partner went back to work last week… I was right there!" - TreatOutside
"Staring at the door waiting for the only human he cares about to come home (obviously not me)" - SnarkyRedhead
Herding Cats
Giphy"Probably trying to herd the cats."
"He's a border collie mix who's afraid of goats and sheep, but even after six years of living with them he still thinks he can control where the cats go."
"He's a good boy, he's very persistent, but not terribly bright sometimes." - TokesNotHigh
"After 8 years our border collie still herds the cats, and the vacuum." - psychologicaluse28
"Big heart, small brain. I have one of those dogs too. They are the sweetest." - Technobucket
Wretched Existence
Giphy"She has flung herself flat across the bed and is playing dead, quiet except for the occasional pitiful whine. Every now and then she lifts her head up and fixes a desperate look upon me, silently begging for release from her wretched existence."
"She's a bit overdramatic about having to wear a cone. The issue is an abrasion on a toe that she won't stop licking, which is making it worse."
"I've been alternating between bandaging it and having her wear a cone. She's been consistently a drama queen." - halfinboxes
One Hour
Giphy"Staring at me because their dinner time is in one hour and they need to start letting me know that, in an hour, they need to eat...in an hour, so I better not forget...cuz they're hungry, which is why they're staring at me...and it's almost dinner time."
"Just one more hour, And they want to make sure I don't forget. Because maybe I will."
"So, they need to remind me. By staring at me. Every day. One hour before dinner." - MotherOfFred
A Little "Light" Exercise
Giphy"Mine loves light reflected off watches or phones. And loves lasers."
"It's sunny and he sees light on the wall so he is bothering me to use my watch or phone so he can chase the light. I've spent the last hour doing it."
"I even got him a cat laser toy that's automatic for him and he runs himself tired as all hell with it. But he is STILL asking for it."
"Used the laser toy also too, so he is panting dripping tongue and still wants to play more..." - boomgoon
Vicious Predators
Giphy"Last night my dogs chased down and killed a rabbit in the backyard. They are usually so gentle; this was weird and unexpected."
"I watched the whole thing helpless because it was so fast. The rabbit screamed, it was insane."
"Now, I'm watching them sleep on my couch and can't help but think they just murdered someone."
"They are just vicious predators, right here, in my house. On my couch."
"But they snuggly as f*ck. This trips me out." - Atheist_Redditor
A Problematic Princess
Giphy"We have two chihuahuas. One is a 15 year old (quite appropriately) named Princess and one is a one year old named Charlie."
"Both have their own dog beds on the couch since they are spoiled."
"When Princess is feeling particularly moody or like asserting her dominance, she will drag Charlie's bed into her bed and lay on top of BOTH of them and snarl at him if he comes close to her personal space bubble/bed mountain."
"And when we tell her she can't have both beds and put his bed back to the side, she just glares at us. Lol." - mslm90
Shoe-nanigans
Giphy"She's currently in her cage resting after her great adventure."
"She managed to get upstairs and grab a hold of one of my shoes. Not just any old shoe, but one of the shoes I am planning to wear this weekend for my wedding."
"After running around, she dropped the shoe to chew on a shirt - at which point she was cornered, and then brought downstairs."
"Pup and shoe are both unharmed and doing well. My nerves, not so much." - still_interesting23
So ... what's YOUR dog been up to lately?
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