Quote Originally Posted by Niya View Post
I am solely responsible for the state of my life. The more I know about the world around me, the better choices I can make. It's really as simple as that for me.
Really?

I've lived what could only be considered a charmed life. I have a mind and body that allows me to do pretty nearly anything I want (except be a jockey...I can't be a jockey). I had the upbringing that opened any door I wanted. And yet, when I look back on my life, I am barely responsible for the state of my life. I made good choices from the options before me, but I NEVER put those options before me. Did I make the BEST choices? Well, I can't be sure, since I've only followed this path, but there are some other options I think I should have pursued. However, those other options are always women, and you never know how that would have turned out. Still, I made pretty good choices, I just wasn't the one putting the options before me.

For example, when I got out of college, I went hiking for four months. That was all I was planning, so while I was out there, I was trying to figure out what to do next. I decided that all I really knew was being in school, so I went back to my college to talk to my advisor. He gave me a list of grad schools he thought I might like. I promptly lost the list, applied to the only ones I could remember from the list, and went to the one that offered me the most money. So, my advisor gave me the list of places to apply. My choice was based on who gave me the most money, not on the degree, which was a good thing, because I changed from toxicology to fisheries. I started with a toxicologist, but he took a job at a different university, leaving me with no major. A buddy of mine, who I had met when we were signing up for classes, suggested I join him in fisheries. My first job was because the guy who hired me had graduated from the same place a year before I started and only posted jobs to schools he had attended. His advisor knew I was looking for a job, and passed the listing on to me...and so on.

So, perhaps you could say that I was responsible because people liked me enough to help me out, but my grad school was because of the list my advisor gave me, and the funding structure of that school relative to the others, then my major was based on a suggestion from a guy I had befriended while applying for classes, and then my first job was based on a listing being passed along by somebody else where the listing only existed because my future boss happened to have attended that school.

What part of that was my doing?