The Power of Wrong Decisions

This is a difficult, politically correct world. The good news: the world is mostly wrong. For those inclined to sue, this is an opinion, neither fully documented nor supported. It stands substantiated only by the flimsy evidence of a failing memory. I want not to run nor will I accept a nomination to anything.

As I look back on many of my life’s decisions, shockingly, my wrong decisions seem to have been the most momentous and have led to the most positive outcomes of my life. 

My first adventure in this world, of course not really mine, was being born to poor people. And, caring people at that. I had no opportunity to feel neglected, put off into some boarding school, not abused, starved nor mistreated. The only thing we didn’t have was money.

Having matured during an age of protest, I made my first wrong decision of consequence. I joined the Air Force (you could say getting high without drugs) as a protest against going into the Army that tried to draft me.   The Air Force promised training for a specialty (medic), and I believed.  Another wrong decision.

On the bright side, having a guaranteed subsistence income as an Airman, I did something right.  I proposed to the most beautiful girl in the world. And, after a wrong decision on her part, we were married and hurried off to my first official post. The wrong decision on her part was one of the few right decisions that worked for me. Not realizing poverty was a problem, and against all recommendations, we had a daughter.

And then an amazing thing happened. The base I was stationed at closed, and all of us stationed there were forced to move. As part of the move preparations, we were tested for Officer Candidate School. I passed and was assigned to the University of Oklahoma to study a subject foreign to me, Meteorology. Several bad decisions gone right.  

Of course, not recognizing a good thing (we had climbed the ladder from enlisted to commissioned), I and my growing family (3 children by now) left active duty at the first opportunity. Fortune again smiled on a wrong decision, and I was hired by the National Weather Service. I corrected that error by returning to the National Guard. I knew it was a correct decision as everyone thought it a bad move.

After a few years, to make matters worse, I made another strategic career killing move in the Weather Service. I was trained as a line forecaster, the front line of weather forecasting, and that was the career pathway of choice for weather weenies. Not wanting to spoil a record of real blunders, I chose to move to an agricultural weather center, a weather forecasting gulag. That bad decision allowed me to get a Master’s Degree from a great school and for my children to grow and thrive in a wonderful rural community. Bad decisions couldn’t get any better.

Then I found a way to make it worse. In their bureaucratic omnipotence, the Weather Service decided to close their dedicated agricultural weather programs. But where could an agricultural meteorologist go in a line forecasting organization. My choice was into the hydrology program, a not recommended foray in a weather weenies world. That bad decision allowed me to meet Dr. Mike, the most dedicated and insightful leader I ever encountered in government, the head of the NWS Hydrology program. I joined him at NWS headquarters and led portions of 2 large hardware/software telecommunications programs under his guidance.

My next blunder was of epic proportions. Few career government employees move from one agency to another. Most never try. But, with a history of surviving wrong decisions, I applied for and received a position leading the weather programs of a different government agency. I was looked at as a turncoat in one agency and a carpetbagger in the other. It was a dream position.

Looking back, I recognize my wrong decisions were the big decisions, the correct decisions, the ones that were the most difficult but the most rewarding. And. I thank God every day, my loving wife made her biggest wrong decision and stuck with it so many years ago.

In this world of immediate and unrelenting critical outbursts for every wrong decision someone makes, I say enough already. I say, wrong decisions are the first step to realize one’s potential. Criticize all you want, but I say the only thing criticism accomplishes is to make you so fearful of criticism that you are paralyzed. Made a wrong decision? I applaud you.

Call me The Last Curmudgeon.

P.S. For the anal out there, I do not mean illegal or immoral decisions. There, I said it.

Al Peterlin