Past, Present and Future

Redundant

Write about a fork in the road in your life, and how you made the decision to go the direction you did. What would have happened if you chose the other path?

Straight off the top of my head I thought of quite a few forks in the road moments. Then I took a minute and realized that some of them might be classed as sliding door moments.

(Sliding Door movie always makes me laugh. Some good British humour).

I suppose the difference is that you don’t have any control over a sliding door moment but when you come to a fork in the road you have a choice of which way to go.
My example has three forks!

Summer 1995, I was in my 17th year working for an English automotive glass company. Over the years I had worked my way slowly up the short, wobbly ladder of management and I was managing two small branches of the company.
I was called to a strategy meeting with my immediate boss. I knew that he would want to talk about declining sales figures, so I went prepared with my forecasts on how I was going to turn it around.

My boss opened up with, “I don’t want to talk about sales. Put your paperwork away, let us talk about something else.”
He was making my job redundant, but he offered me a different job if I wanted to stay with the company. The redundancy package was good.
After having lunch together, he told me to go home and think about what I wanted to do. Take the money and leave or stay with the company in a different job.

I had a two-hour drive home with all kinds of thoughts racing through my head. I got home and called my mum and dad to tell them my situation. I didn’t want them to decide for me, I knew that they would support me whatever I decided.
I then called my brother. This is when the third fork in the road appeared. My brother wasn’t home, so I told my sister-in-law my situation.
“Come and live with us and see what happens.” At the time they lived in Mallorca, Spain.

So my options were, I could stay in England with a steady job. I could take the money and look for a new job in England. Or option number three was to take the money and go and live in Mallorca and see which way the wind blew me.

My kids had just gone to live in America with their mum which made my decision easier. About seven hours after I had had lunch with my boss, I had decided to take the money and go to live in Mallorca.

I ended up working in the private yachting industry and travelling around the world.

That one decision changed my life and because of where I went and what I did it steered my kids in a direction that they hadn’t thought that they would go.

My life in England probably would have been okay if I had chosen to stay in Blighty. But I have never regretted my choice.
There has been a few more forks in the road since that summer in England but that was the big one.