Some days change your life. A decision is made, or a realisation dawns, and then your life takes one particular path rather than another. Everything that follows is different to what would have happened otherwise, and life is never quite the same again. Maybe you don't realise at the time just how important that day is going to be, or maybe you do and its significance weighs heavy on your soul. Whatever the case, some days change your life. And, for me, today is quite possibly one of those days. Outcome of a certain Big Decision finally gets announced today, you see. Ulp.
Three of the most important days that changed my life were in the mid 80s. Tuesday 21st December 1982, for example. It wasn't the day I failed my driving test for the first time - that was two days later - but it was the day when I found out I had a place at university. Not everybody did in those days, and a whole different world opened up as a result. There was one Saturday in 1984 which had a similarly eye-opening effect, and then there was Friday 1st August 1986. As I noted in my diary at the time, this one would seal my fate for decades to come. Career, what to do for a career? I'd been trying to get into one particular part of the media, and trying, and failing, and I had just one application still in the running. It looked like an alternative career was needed, so I took myself off up North for the day to apply for something else and to find myself some lodgings for a year. When I got home later that evening the final rejection letter was waiting unopened in my parents' eager hands, and so I found myself careering up path 2 rather than path 1. And I'm still going steadily up path 2, at least until this afternoon.
Jump ahead to Saturday 23rd August 1997. I'd bought myself a new computer a few days earlier, and on this particular afternoon I decided to attach it to the new-fangled internet for the first time. Nothing out of the ordinary happened that day, although I rediscovered an old university friend and discovered webpages on topics I'd never believed other people would be interested in too. However that web connection ultimately led to me applying for a new job I'd otherwise never have noticed, and if I'd not connected when I did I'd almost certainly not be in London today. It all looked rather bleak midway through that last sequence, but everything turned out fine in the end thanks to Thursday 7th June 2001. That was the occasion on which I just happened to meet my current boss for the first time on the day my last boss finally pissed me off for the last time. On such a coincidence my present life in E3 rests.
Other days will have changed my life completely without me even noticing. People I never met because I wasn't where they were at the right moment, job adverts I never saw because I didn't think to look, fatal accidents I never had because I left the house at a slightly different time or travelled via a slightly different route. Who knows what I've missed out on, or what's missed out on me? I didn't notice the most important decision in my life either, the one that really changed everything. I don't know the date exactly but I'm guessing that it was some time in June 1964, nine months before I was born. Against all the odds that was the occasion on which exactly the right sperm met exactly the right egg, from my point of view at least. Thanks Mum, thanks Dad. In comparison, every other decision in my life pales into insignificance. Even Thursday 18th March 2004. Because no matter how tomorrow may look, the future will always work itself out. It has so far anyway. Fingers crossed.
