The Best Decision I Ever Made
Dec. 13th, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2NPR's The Power of Voice did a call-in show last week on "The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made". Tonight they did the opposite, "The Best Decision I Ever Made". Many of the responses involved going to college, getting married, leaving a job to do something else, picking up and moving across the country or travelling the world for a spell. Basically they were all decisions that involved big risks and big rewards or that had life-altering consequences.
I had to think a bit about what my own response would be, because I've never been much of a risk-taker and I haven't made a lot of really big decisions of that sort. Even my roommate Tom moved to Hawaii for two years to work for the University of Hawaii -- that was a big decision, full of risk, but one he clearly never regretted making.
For myself, when I had that kind of an opportunity, I didn't take it. When Wosca folded I could have continued as a 2e programmer and eventually earned quite a bit of money, but I would have had to take a job somewhere else in the country, and I didn't want to do that. So I stayed here in the Seattle area and fell back on my rate clerk skills. Which has not been a bad decision, I have a good union job and I like the company I work for. But that would have been the "big leap of faith" decision that I might have made, but didn't make.
My actual answer to this question doesn't really involve much risk. In my junior year of high school, one of the seniors who was a friend of mine started his own comic. "Ismet" by Greg Wadsworth was technically a furry comic (I didn't know that at the time) and ran for about 7 issues, before Greg gave up on it and went off to art college, and I never heard from him again. But I really liked his comic. I'd never followed comics growing up, I wasn't much into the whole superhero thing, but I went looking for other comics that might be as good as the one my friend made. I discovered Elfquest.
I loved EQ, so much so that I decided to join the fan club -- another thing I'd never done before. I remained a part of the fan club for a year or so, and one night not long after my family had moved to Longview and I started my 2nd year of community college, I decided that I needed to do something about this fan club thing. Up until that point I'd been recieving the official club newsletter (4 times a year I think) and once a year I recieved a listing of all the club members and the "holts" that other club members had started. But I didn't feel involved in the fandom at all, really. I wanted to get more involved somehow.
One of the things I did was join a holt. After seeing what that was about, getting the newsletters and reading the stories (and even having something of my own published), I was hooked. I wanted to start my own holt and fanzine -- which I eventually did.
But the other thing that I did, on that day when I decided I had to "make something happen" and "get more involved" with EQ fandom, was to pick out a name of another person in the fan club and write a letter to them. It's important to note that I only did this once, with one person, and that's one of the things that makes the story so remarkable. Based on the fact that he lived in the Northwest and had a cool elf name, I wrote a letter to Keith Alan Johnson. He wrote back.
Well anyway, I could go on to describe everything that happened after that, but basically I wound up attending Norwescon 7 in the Spring, where I met Keith and Juli and her friend, and where I talked to Keith about my fanzine plans... I talked other friends of mine, including Gene, into joining my fanzine... I met many other people like Kristin and Julie specifically because of my involvement in Elfquest fandom... I came to Seattle (because of my friend Darrell) to attend SPU, and Gene and Joe followed me a year later... I began to hang out with Keith on a regular basis once I was in Seattle... etc. etc.
I'm not sure how different my life might have been if I hadn't written that letter to Keith. Keith's response encouraged me to work on starting my fanzine. Keith's invitation to attend Norwescon 7 introduced me to fandom. My involvement in EQ fandom introduced me to many people who are still good friends, and lead directly to the founding of the Tai-Pan, which has kept my circle of friends together and has introduced me to many more new friends. Without that letter, I might never have met most of my current friends, and even of those friends I knew already -- such as Gene -- who knows if we would have even stayed in touch for all of these years, or whether either of us would have wound up in Seattle and stayed here?
Well anyway, it was a small decision that had very big consequences, and I'd have to say it's one of the best decisions I ever made. I might have wound up with a better job, better education, who knows. But I can't imagine that I would have ever wound up with better friends.
I had to think a bit about what my own response would be, because I've never been much of a risk-taker and I haven't made a lot of really big decisions of that sort. Even my roommate Tom moved to Hawaii for two years to work for the University of Hawaii -- that was a big decision, full of risk, but one he clearly never regretted making.
For myself, when I had that kind of an opportunity, I didn't take it. When Wosca folded I could have continued as a 2e programmer and eventually earned quite a bit of money, but I would have had to take a job somewhere else in the country, and I didn't want to do that. So I stayed here in the Seattle area and fell back on my rate clerk skills. Which has not been a bad decision, I have a good union job and I like the company I work for. But that would have been the "big leap of faith" decision that I might have made, but didn't make.
My actual answer to this question doesn't really involve much risk. In my junior year of high school, one of the seniors who was a friend of mine started his own comic. "Ismet" by Greg Wadsworth was technically a furry comic (I didn't know that at the time) and ran for about 7 issues, before Greg gave up on it and went off to art college, and I never heard from him again. But I really liked his comic. I'd never followed comics growing up, I wasn't much into the whole superhero thing, but I went looking for other comics that might be as good as the one my friend made. I discovered Elfquest.
I loved EQ, so much so that I decided to join the fan club -- another thing I'd never done before. I remained a part of the fan club for a year or so, and one night not long after my family had moved to Longview and I started my 2nd year of community college, I decided that I needed to do something about this fan club thing. Up until that point I'd been recieving the official club newsletter (4 times a year I think) and once a year I recieved a listing of all the club members and the "holts" that other club members had started. But I didn't feel involved in the fandom at all, really. I wanted to get more involved somehow.
One of the things I did was join a holt. After seeing what that was about, getting the newsletters and reading the stories (and even having something of my own published), I was hooked. I wanted to start my own holt and fanzine -- which I eventually did.
But the other thing that I did, on that day when I decided I had to "make something happen" and "get more involved" with EQ fandom, was to pick out a name of another person in the fan club and write a letter to them. It's important to note that I only did this once, with one person, and that's one of the things that makes the story so remarkable. Based on the fact that he lived in the Northwest and had a cool elf name, I wrote a letter to Keith Alan Johnson. He wrote back.
Well anyway, I could go on to describe everything that happened after that, but basically I wound up attending Norwescon 7 in the Spring, where I met Keith and Juli and her friend, and where I talked to Keith about my fanzine plans... I talked other friends of mine, including Gene, into joining my fanzine... I met many other people like Kristin and Julie specifically because of my involvement in Elfquest fandom... I came to Seattle (because of my friend Darrell) to attend SPU, and Gene and Joe followed me a year later... I began to hang out with Keith on a regular basis once I was in Seattle... etc. etc.
I'm not sure how different my life might have been if I hadn't written that letter to Keith. Keith's response encouraged me to work on starting my fanzine. Keith's invitation to attend Norwescon 7 introduced me to fandom. My involvement in EQ fandom introduced me to many people who are still good friends, and lead directly to the founding of the Tai-Pan, which has kept my circle of friends together and has introduced me to many more new friends. Without that letter, I might never have met most of my current friends, and even of those friends I knew already -- such as Gene -- who knows if we would have even stayed in touch for all of these years, or whether either of us would have wound up in Seattle and stayed here?
Well anyway, it was a small decision that had very big consequences, and I'd have to say it's one of the best decisions I ever made. I might have wound up with a better job, better education, who knows. But I can't imagine that I would have ever wound up with better friends.
