The turning point

Some people say if they could go back in time and change something in their past, they wouldn't. I can't say that. I think the reason most people say that is because either they have limited imaginations on how things might change if something in their past were changed (Admittedly, I have an OVER-active imagination), or it may be that they truly have no idea where the "hinge pin" of their life was. Or, in VERY very few cases, they may have perfect lives.
Again, none of those three are the case for me.
I would change a few things in my past, but ONE thing would alter everything since in numerous and potentially massive ways.
I would never have dropped out of the University of Kansas.
From the day I quit being a Jayhawk, everything has spiralled downhill.
I had an amazingly realistic dream the other night, you know the kind, one of those so real that when you wake up, you think you're in the wrong life.
I was doing the kind of work I had always wanted to, I had the life, and the wife, I have longed for, and was living in a place I truly adored.
I can tell you what the house looked like, my kids' names, when we got each of the dogs, exactly WHERE each of the knick-knacks on the walls and curios came from.
I had memories of everything that had happened to THAT me from my freshman year at Kansas onward.
VERY few things that have happened since 1995 had happened.
Scott hadn't died.
Mom hadn't gotten cancer.
I hadn't gone to jail.
I'd never published the book.

The most important things were still there. My friends were all there, as they are here today. Of course, MOST of them I have known since High School. I still became friends with Donnelly and Mike Scott, since they were friends of Ben and Karna in college in the alterverse still.

The worst part was seeing the man I was had I followed that path. I know what I did, every step, to get there.
But it's fourteen years later and some of those opportunities have gone by.
Things are easier to do when you don't know your limits at eighteen as opposed to thirty three.
Guess that means I just have to find another way to get back there. If I start today, I can have that life by the time I'm forty-seve.....wow.
I wonder if there's a shortcut.
Because, like happens once in a while, I don't think this was just a dream.
I think it was a wakeup call.
Sure, I can't reverse some things, but, maybe, just maybe, I can attain the others.