28
votes
What's an opportunity that you missed?
Something that got away from you.
What was it?
Why did you miss it?
How do you feel about it now?
Something that got away from you.
What was it?
Why did you miss it?
How do you feel about it now?
Almost two decades ago, I worked as a video editor for a well-known artist in my state. He was funny, brilliant, and kind. That was a period of political campaigning, when many audiovisual workers dropped everything they were doing to make bank working for politicians. That was the only reason I got the job, I was replacing people way more experienced than me. Apparently my boss liked my work, and eventually asked me how much I would charge to work for him permanently. The value I gave him took into account my evaluation of my own competence, and how much would I need to have a comfortable life without luxuries. When I told him the number, he was taken aback, as it was much more than he thought. I don't think it was an absurd value, but he was clearly used to paying much less. His reaction was not disrespectful, but perhaps a little emotional and excessive. I felt a little ashamed and we never approached that issue again.
In retrospect, I had so much to learn from that guy that I should have further negotiated with him. The immense value that I would get from him greatly outweighed being paid less. The images he asked me to edit were beautiful, interesting, engrossing, and complex. He died of cancer a few years ago. From our interactions, I can say he was a great guy. He treated his employees with kindness and respected their contributions to his art. His leadership was soft and non-aggressive. I missed the chance to be an apprentice of a great artist.
I get the general regret and guilt that can come from this, but as an artist who got shoved out doing art for a living because no one was willing to pay: Thank you for evaluating yourself appropriately. The entire industry is full of well-admired employers tricking starstruck and meek new talent to work for peanuts. You evaluated yourself and said "I need this much to live reasonably okay." If he couldn't do that, then the gig wouldn't have been financially sound anyway. And if he could pay but wasn't willing, then he wasn't going to be as nice to work with as you might think.
Creatives as a whole have gotten stiffed and its because creatives undervalue themselves. Thank you for not being one of the people dragging the rest down.
Damn, you really pulled me in with that story! Have you ever considered going back into the field (if you left)? Or did it impact you further than the degradation of your relationship with him?
It's really hard to negotiate well and see the big picture, while negotiating. I think you made a reasonable choice, because undervaluing yourself can lead to a huge problem as well. You say you realize, "I should have further negotiated with him." And I think that is a wise lesson to learn, it shows that you have realized some flexibility and second attempts are required, in life. I appreciate you sharing the story !
Thanks!
I am a film major and that will never change, but in recent years I have been trying to direct my creative energy into writing. Films are way too expensive and complicated, and the budgets we get here in Brazil would never be enough to make my ideas a reality. My relationship with THE ARTIST didn't degrade, but eventually, the job was done and we parted ways amicably. I wish I had been more humble back then because, in retrospect, working with him would make me a better artist. I used to be very adamant that I was only interested in narrative films, with stories and such. I thought anything else was unworthy of my attention. That guy did huge sculptures and structures. His workspace was more like a factory, with employees and such. He also did the most beautiful videoart, like something Win Wenders or Herzog would do. And I probably thought it was trash because I was so focused in narrative.
I hope you do go into writing/release something in the written form!
I find your writing interesting and sophisticated.
I didn't get to weigh in on your thread asking about your writing style/AI, but I want to echo the thoughts of others. I find your writing wonderful and don't think you need to change a thing!
Oh man, that huge factory like work sounds so epic T_T I hope you get to stretch your imagination and mind again.
That's an interesting story, and thank you for sharing it.
I don't know if it's the American in me--I fully believe you about the quality of his character, from what you've said he sounds like a great guy--but I believe in asking and fighting for what you're worth, as you outlined about your experience and skills. If you had continued that conversation, I hope you wouldn't have negotiated yourself down. Or, and I've done this back when I was freelancing, negotiated yourself down but say "I'm not giving you 100% of my time and will take other jobs that aren't a conflict of interest".
It's academic at this point, but what I'm trying to say for the future is "ask for what you're worth, because no one else will".
I remember looking into Bitcoin in either 2011 or 2012 and trying a bit of mining before giving up, considering it a waste of CPU cycles and largely forgetting about it for a while. I still don't buy into cryptocurrency in general these days but that would have been a tidy profit if I bought some back then and cashed out some years later.
I'm guessing this is going to be a very common one for a lot of people.
I remember not wanting to burn out my GTX 550 mining crypto as my parents wouldn't buy me a new one if I ruined this one and Bitcoins weren't worth that much. Now those coins I could have mined would have paid for a whole lot, or event set me up for some future success if I had sold them earlier.
Of course, even if you had obtained some, probably you would not have held until the current market value and instead sold at like $10/$100/whatever, and then this post would end up being wishing you hadn't sold. So I think I'm at peace with a similar situation for myself, since nobody had a crystal ball.
I was around and had the opportunities to have Bitcoin given to you for free just to grow the popularity of the currency…
I got 0.02 BTC for free at that time. Donated it when it was worth $100. No regrets. Can't wait for the whole crypocurrency bubble to die, but I'm not holding my breath.
I was at university at the time when bitcoin came out and I was living in the shared residence where the power and Internet was a fixed rate included in your rent.
A freind at the time told me this crypto thing was gonna be big and gave me some instructions to mine. I left the pc on a few nights and I got myself half a coin. But jesus it was so loud because my room was so small, so I stopped it because it was just so noisy.
Years later I found that half a coin and sold it for £8000 which helped me put down a deposit for an apartment.
Part of me is like "damn I could have got a lot more" but also I did get a good win out of it so you gotta take what you get.
On the flip side, I had a different freind who was big into bitcoin, she mined I think 10 bitcoin when it was easy. She was then extremely proud of herself when she was able to use her completely fake Internet money to buy a pizza when it broke the dollar mark. Lol.
I had a chance to get in on the ground floor of Bitcoin, but when I looked into it at the time you could only really use it to buy stuff like hitmen or heroin. It felt both risky and immoral to buy into that sort of thing, even by proxy, so I passed.
I don’t really regret it, especially because I would have cashed out WAY before it went big and probably had much worse regrets for not holding out.
I bought 19599 of DOGE as a sort of $10 joke wager back in college. Found my blockchain and was excited to cash out at like $120... Aah well.
I bought $100 worth five years ago (40,241 DOGE). That many DOGE was worth $32,000 at one point, I believe. I don't regret my decision to sell, though, because I bought it to try what seemed to be effectively an arbitrage opportunity on Robinhood. It worked and I made a nice 1.6% profit in 24 hours, but then they wanted to verify my ID and I had some trouble doing that so I didn't continue. It probably wouldn't have been an effective strategy in the long run anyway.
Still would have been nice if I'd forgotten to sell and turned it into $16,000 or something. It would still be worth like $6500 today.
So I got started mining in 2009, when Bitcoin was a cool math toy and potentially a means of avoiding the privacy impacts of credit and banking data gathering. I gave $20 in Bitcoin to EFF when BTC = $0.50 USD, and another 30 BTC to a Canadian author who wound up in legal trouble at the time. Eventually, I got out with enough to pay off my mortgage and a modest retirement nest egg. So I don't regard any of it as a missed opportunity, just spreading a lucky break around.
I did quit when the rig started heating the house, and I realized cryptocurrency is a monstrous entropy engine with no economic value. Winning, I guess?
Yeah, I paid 10 bitcoin for a pizza once. At the time, it was crazy cheap.
Similar here. I think I might have stumbled upon it even earlier (it’s all a blur) but either way my iMac’s GPU didn’t have enough power to mine much and I had a hard time justifying building a rig so I gave up.
Basically my entire life I feel like. Adhd is a fucking bitch and depression is even worse. They struck hardest in college (the first time) and I missed out on that sweet STEM money/life early on. I was smart and talented enough to get into a good school, and dysfunctional enough to drop out. Nearly ended up homeless after nearly ending up dead.
Anyways I'm just grateful for what I have now and hopeful to achieve more now that I understand myself and my condition better. I have the stability I always wanted and the ability to attain more.
At least, as long as the world doesn't go tits up.
I just want to say that this is a beautiful thing to take away from your experiences. At the end of the day it can be hard to be content with where we are at, simply because it is not where we eventually want to be. I just found it helpful to reflect on this, so thanks.
Getting an education.
I entered “high school” (10th grade) in 2005. In Portugal, you get to choose a “course” that is a bit more specialized. I wanted to study arts. My parents forced me into IT because “computers are the future”. They weren’t wrong, but I didn’t know that, nor did they know how to encourage me to stick with a course I didn’t like, to make a good living, and then pursue my passions on the side.
So, I entered into a bad high school. I had six classmates. For three years, all we did was play Unreal Tournament (GOTY) or Ogame. Our teachers didn’t care. We learned nothing.
I somehow was still able to apply for university in 2008, but due to some bad influences at that time, decided to go for one that was like five hours away from home. Last-minute, my mom found a room for me to stay at, in an apartment with three other boys who I didn’t know.
I never had to care of myself until then. That was a steep learning curve. Those boys were weird (one of them let a chicken burn in the oven overnight, almost setting the apartment on fire). I couldn’t keep up in class because I didn’t learn any math in high school.
I quit and returned home.
I tried again in 2010.
This time, I got into the university closest to home (which is a pretty good one), got a cool room just for myself right in front of the entrance to the campus, and had befriended some kids who were mostly OK. There were also a few other kids that I knew from high school around. I just needed to push through.
But, as was expected, I failed all subjects in the first trimester. I was discouraged and quit again.
I was 21 then. I’m 35 now. That decision to quit the second time, destroyed my life. I will live in poverty, unable to do anything meaningful or to properly provide for myself, because of that one decision.
I hated math, sure, but I was able to learn. My parents wouldn’t have minded me repeating the first year. Eventually I would have brute forced my way through the subjects (I think).
Had I stuck it out, I would now have a degree, and would be able to get an actual job, or at least, have more opportunities to find one.
My parents forced me to get into IT. I wish they had forced me to stay in it.
I could've stolen a lot more stationery from my school. Multiple schools, really. And I can think of one that would've looked really good on fire. I think that's mostly it, really - my biggest regrets are not indulging the vengeful urges of youth. I think that could be a mistake too many people make in the pursuit of 'being the better person', and it allows unpardonable behaviour to go unpunished and contributes, in its own way, to the shittifying of the world.
I love this one! We can make up for a lot of things, but there are some things really reserved for the youth.
Pranking and pushing the boundaries is one.
I thoroughly enjoyed the silly pranks my friends and I did as teenagers (rearranging someone's garden ornaments or adding a praying cherub to a garden at night), that are activities we really can't engage in much as adults. Those people I pranked with went on to be successful doctors and teachers, so it's not like it took us down a pathway of crime lol.
When I was in college, a professor I really respected offered to help me get a job a research lab he was involved with.
I already had a job lined up, and ended up turning him down without much thought.
The more time I spend at the job I turned him down for, the more I regret not taking him up on it.
When I was younger I was in the train and a cute girl sitting in front of me, she was looking at me a bit and then started to draw/write something on a piece of paper. She then gave me a note saying she thought we were in high-school together. We talked the whole way until she had to get off. I never saw her again. It didn't occurred to me to ask her her number, but tbh back then mobile phones were not so common and I wasn't really a phone guy anyway. I don't feel too bad about it but it was really cute.
I wouldn't feel too bad about it, if only because public transport must be one of the worst places to have that kind of encounter.
I've been there myself, you have a great time talking, maybe the idea of asking for a number crosses your mind, maybe it doesn't. But the fact is suddenly someone needs to get off, and public transport does not wait for two strangers to exchange numbers.
No-one is going to miss their stop unless it's something magical.
So you either ask like midway though the trip or you're stuck at the end!
I could have been a graduate student in Finland with a cool graduation sword by now. And probably working on something cool in the bioengineering space, but alas here we are.
I could have bought a property/house during multiple dips of the market, but I didn’t.
I could have quit a lot of jobs or sought out better conditions before things got too bad.
I could have gotten and earlier diagnosis for a lot of my problems, but that one is really not on me.
Life is full of could have, should have, would have... I find it's better to focus on the do have.
Agreed. Life is too short to spend it regretting the past.
Missed car opportunities bug me.
When I was looking for a first car, someone was selling a pristine '99 Saab 9-3 turbo convertible for like $2300, owned by a Saab salesman. Called him, told me that he had just got a call from someone driving down two states to looking at the car. He'd let me know if they passed it up... Of course not. Ended up in a fuckboy WRX hatch.
I looked at a pretty gorgeous red '90 Miata. The short nose crank concerns and a weird security-looking gizmo stopped me from plunking down the money on the spot, and I was going to check out someone's Civic Del Sol so I said I'd sleep on it, but the Del Sol turned out to be a terrible car. Ended up buying a different NA Miata that was a total lemon.
During the pandemic I wanted a fun hatchback. I was refreshing constantly and I happened upon, within 5 mins of posting, a gorgeous red stock Integra GSR for $4500. I was concerned about safety/comfort and someone stealing it in the moment, so I refreshed and within 40 minutes it was gone. I shoulda just thrown the offer out and rescinded it later. Ended up in a Mk5 GTI, which I loved and wasn't a total lemon, but I totally put more money into it than I paid for it in the year I owned it.
Similarly I was doing some prowling for a fun car and stumbled upon a 2zz swapped MR2 Spyder in yellow with a 6 speed for $6k. I had been hanging out with friends, so I wasn't mashing F5 like a maniac on FBM like I had been the entire rest of the week and got to it at like the 6 hour mark. Messaged him, told me that he had just got a message from someone driving down two states to looking at the car, he'd let me know if they passed it up... ugh. Ended up in a pretty red 1.8 NA Miata... With a leaky trunk, a pinhole in the top, a bad e-brake, and which blew a coolant hose and almost warped the head. But it is real purdy!
These cars could've been just as bad as mine or worse, but they linger in my dreams.
Man, I've had several different opportunities to buy cars on the cheap but I rarely have the courage to pull the trigger. I'll share a couple of opportunities.
April, 2020, everything in the States is shutting down. People losing jobs. My wife was just furloughed. And out of nowhere a cousin of a cousin of a cousin reached out asking if I was interested in his grandma's Acura Legend in mint condition because grandma is getting too old and can't drive any longer. I just couldn't spend $3k on a car when I could lose my job any time. About nine months later and 90s Honda and Acura cars are selling for unbelievable amounts. I could have sold that legend for $25k.
In summer of 2021, similar situation. A friend of a friend of a friend reached out asking if I still liked older Honda and Acura cars. Turns out his grandparents were downsizing and had a few old cars to sell one of which was an old Honda they didn't think they could sell for much so they asked me if I wanted it. While not as nice as the Legend from the first story, it was still clean and low mileage. It was a 1993 Accord with all of 18k miles. They offered it to me for $1500 if I'd fly to Tampa to pick it up. I thought about it for a couple of weeks and eventually said no. A few months later and about a dozen 1991-1993 Honda accords are going for 15-20k on Bring a Trail, Cars and Bids, and other auction sites.
Back around 1999, I bought $50K worth of Celgene stock (pharma startup) that was selling thalidomide (of birth defect notoriety) to treat multiple myeloma (a pretty serious blood cancer). Celgene was valued at about $500 million at the time.
I sold it a year later and I think I made about $200 K profit (pats self on the back for getting lucky).
Bristol Myers Squibb bought Celgene for $74 billion in 2019.
74 billion divided by 500 million = 148-fold increase, which would be 7.4 million for me. So, I left about 7.2 million on the table.
I know that's materialistic, but it would've transformed my life. And yeah, it's pretty darned hard to sell at the top.
I’m amused by the “I just 4x my money in a short period of time, but that’s not enough because with magical foresight I could have done even more”
Like, being able to 4x your money even if it takes a whole decade is still an incredibly lucky outcome, you knocked it out of the park!
What I like about your story is that you actually had an opportunity, you got some of the money but could have gotten way more if you had waited just a little bit.
Meanwhile, whenever questions like this get posted, half the stories are from people looking back and wishfully thinking.
"Oh if I had bought Bitcoin in 2012, I'd now be a billionaire? Why didn't you buy Bitcoin in 2012 then? I was only eleven years old and had no cash to my name nor did I have a computer."
Or people who talk about Apple or Amazon. "I had an opportunity to invest in apple in 1999 and then again I'm 2002. Why didn't you? In 1999 I got my first job and in 2002 I got my first full time job but unfortunately I didn't learn about investing until 2008."
I could have gone to a big, well-regarded state school for free to study linguistics (my chosen field at the time), but chose a small, expensive private college that didn't even offer linguistics courses because I had a friend that went there. He and I never saw each other on campus, and I essentially failed out due to skipping class and refusing to complete assignments.
But I was totally burned out before I even got there, so there's really no reason to think that I would have performed better at the free college. I suspect I would have gotten into more trouble (the private school was small but also rural and fairly strict, so it would have taken effort to get into any real trouble there, and I was not at the time doing "effort" as a rule) for less debt, and I'm not sure the trade would have been a good one.
In either case, if I had been successful in college the first time, I might have totally missed out on the careers and experiences I've had and greatly enjoyed. Who can say? Maybe I would have found the same or greater joy in the other branch of this timeline, maybe not. It's not worth getting sad about to me. Plus it has given me opportunities to coach young people who have similar situations to mine on how to avoid wasting money on suboptimal college choices. They, of course, must choose and experience their own path.
Wow, this is like looking into an alternate reality. I had a very similar choice between my last two choices when I picked a college. I guess I'm lucky I didn't have a friend going to the small, expensive school! Though for me I ultimately decided based on the money and on the relative isolation of the other school.
Yeah, I would definitely not make a similar choice again, but I'm happy with the results regardless. Out of curiosity, how did your choice turn out (so far)?
Overall I think it was a good one! I got pretty lucky, all things considered, as the major factors that went into my choice weren't the major factors that contributed to things going well, but I think the alternative choice would've been worse by a considerable margin for me. Weirdly, one of the major things that contributed to things going well for me was that I went to the same school as a childhood friend whom I'm still great friends with to this day, but that wasn't a factor in what I chose at all.
Most of the dwelling I've done on choices I made have been about subsequent ones lol... But it's hard to extrapolate whether the alternative choices would've actually been better. I've been very fortunate in a lot of ways regardless.
Oh man, I feel like I'm looking in a mirror here. I did the exact same thing--I went to a small and pricey private college that didn't have the linguistics classes I wanted to take, despite having compelling scholarship offers elsewhere, because I had a couple of close childhood friends that went there that I ended up falling out of touch with almost immediately. I also failed out due to burnout and spent most of my freshman second semester hiding in my room and never attending classes or turning in work.
Importantly for my sake, this college was also in the South, and the school I really wanted to attend was in the PNW, the area I had always wanted to live in since I was like 13. I hated living in the South, I strongly disliked the city I lived in, and even after my first semester I wondered why I had bothered playing it safe. I stuck it out for two years before I ran out of money and left because I was failing anyway, and went back to my hometown (about an hour away) to go to the state school there on a free ride, which I could have done at any time. I can honestly say even with decades of hindsight that I gained pretty much nothing at all from my two years and tens of thousands of student loans spent, just to end up back where I started when I left high school but now with a mountain of debt.
Likewise, ultimately everything worked out fine--I did well in the state school, went on to a graduate degree, and started a successful career within 6 months of graduating with my Master's, I paid back about $100k in student loans several years ago. In that same 6 months after graduating I also ended up moving to Seattle like I'd always wanted to, just 10 years later than I'd planned (28 vs. 18). Still here, still love it here, life's been good to me broadly speaking; but I often wonder what would be different if I'd just come out here in the first place to do what I was already always going to do, without losing a decade to what was frankly a lot of struggling. Some good parts--I met my wife and my best friend, I really enjoyed my college job as my first coffee roasting gig though it paid below minimum wage and I loved my grad school experience even though it cost me a fortune in loans when I could have otherwise done it for free.
I'm not particularly angry about it, and I don't have any reason to necessarily think things would have been better in that alternate timeline where I end up in Seattle in 1996 instead of 2006. But I wonder, often.
Yeah, the wondering can be an interesting exercise. I sometimes wonder, but in a weird sense as if I plan to have a second run through this life or something. Which isn't something I actually expect to happen, maybe too many RPGs have rotted my brain lol.
In general, just the ability to ‘know thyself’ at a younger age, and to have the opportunity to take one’s youth to experience the world more authentically, is such an amazing thing, and I definitely did not do that. Truth be told, I think it puts me at a bit of a remove from everyone in my life today, because people simply do not know me, and I also lack the motivation to break and reform the relationships I have with those around me in order for that to change.
For myself, it’s not something that I normally feel anything more than contemplative towards — however, it is something that very much colors my advice for others.
I probably spend too much time pondering things like this, with some options being the classic "invested in x, or if I had chosen to do y instead of z". But I have more general time period of tons of missed opportunities I'd share which I would imagine someone may have done something similar.
I tried staying with my high school girlfriend (who was a year younger than me) after I graduated and went to a state university a couple of hours away. We had talked about breaking up and not doing distance, but I was so sure she was the one and that I could make this work. It did not work out.
I felt like a lot of my freshman year was wasted, as I didn't make many friends in class or try new things or really explore more of myself in a fresh environment during that year when classes were easier, and I would have had more freedom. I also didn't stay out late studying with peers and develop better study habits because I would try to get back to my dorm to chat with her or go back home on the weekends I could to see her. I don't blame her for these things because I made those choices and since I'm a natural homebody, having an excuse to stay in my dorm made it so easy to not get out and do things.
I don't regret the relationship as, even though it ended very poorly, I learned a lot about myself and what I wanted in a girlfriend/future wife. A lot of that was through self-reflection after the fact and when I started dating my next girlfriend (now wife) I realized that there were things I needed to change, with a couple of things being perennial items I still work on to this day (mainly being a home body as my wife loves to explore, so I need to put in more of an effort to propose things and help make it so she isn't always the one suggesting the things we do).
The only odd thing to come out of my ex going to the same university was that she had met my future wife during sorority recruitment. She found out we were dating and later ran into my future wife at a party and drunkenly explained to her why she was justified in cheating on me and on her current boyfriend (ironically for him, the guy she had cheated on me with) because it let her explore her options and be sure she was with the right person. My only somewhat petty "revenge" action when I was told this was to blacklist (ban her from my fraternity chapter property) as I didn't want her to make her way there to try and sleep with my brothers, which I'm pretty sure she would have tried to do since she was turned away from several of our parties that year.
Tldr; tried to maintain distance relationship with high school sweetheart, it did not work out well and caused me to not explore things during my freshman year.
At my coed high school, in our group of friends, there was a girl I was really close with (especially in the final two years before graduating), but while I was slowly building up the courage to ask her on a date, she started seeing someone else.
Only after we graduated (during “schoolies” for anyone in Australia familiar with it) I admitted I’d had a crush on her for the past year or two, and I was completely surprised by her response that it could have been mutual and “why didn’t you say anything?” — of course to me, she was in a relationship and I had no right to destabilise that, which generally everyone else in the group agreed was probably the right call.
Anyway, sometimes I wonder how differently my years immediately after high school might have gone if I’d had the courage to say something sooner; I made my university choice based on nothing in particular, but making that kind of choice with someone else in mind would have set my life on a different path.
But I don’t think I could say it’s a regret, because at university I met someone else who I’ve now been with for over a decade, and if I had gone to a different university (or even still just been in a relationship with this other girl) then things wouldn’t have happened the way they did, and right now I’m very happy with how things are in my life
Nothing too terribly interesting it dramatic from me. I stayed in my first relationship a couple of years too long and during that time, had lots of interest from different girls, but I never let it get beyond flirtatious because of course, I was in a relationship.
But of course, I'm that type who falls in love easily, so that probably would have happened with the next girl and I'd have repeated the same mistake and then wouldn't have ended up with my wife and the life I have now.