I have made many decisions in my life that I now regret in either whole or part, but I take comfort in realizing that I made very few actual bad decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Allow me to clarify. I regret leaving a good job at Lockheed Martin for what would become a terrible experience at DuPont. Even now, knowing what I know, I would probably make the same decision. I was in a weird too-many-bosses power dynamic at Lockheed Martin, and DuPont called me unexpectedly with a job offer that promised interesting work, good money and flexibility. Unfortunately, only one of those things turned out to be true, until I joined a lay-off, which I might get into one day. Terrible experience. I regret\u2014in the sense that I made a choice that had certain unfavorable outcomes\u2014taking that offer.
But if I were presented the same data today (from a different employer, of course), I\u2019d jump at it. It was a learning experience, which I might also get into one day. So, I regret it. But it wasn\u2019t a bad decision.
I regret leaving the National Science Foundation to finish my MA back in the 90s. Ultimately, it led to some great things, but I still wonder if I would have ever gotten to go to Antarctica, if I stayed. It wasn\u2019t a mistake. Or a bad decision, but decisions often come with regrets. And that\u2019s normal.
As the Internet is my witness (and my wife if she still reads this nonsense), I think buying a used 2014 Ford Focus in 2015 was a bad decision. I needed a car to get to work, and it was indeed a car that would take me from Jenkintown, Pa., to Moorestown, N.J., efficiently and affordably. It was just off-lease from an elderly driver who only put 12,000 miles on it in the previous year. I felt like a good, frugal consumer. I read a couple of reviews that seemed to suggest it was an adequate car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n