I was planning to join the military after high school. It was a 3 hour drive to the closest MEPS (military entrance processing station), so the local recruiters only made the trip out there once a week. I already had my date set when another guy dropped out, so my recruiter asked if I was interested in going a week earlier. I said absolutely, because I was dead et on being in the Army, so what difference did one more week make?
Asked my boss jokingly and nonchalantly if they would relocate me. I didn’t expect an easy yes and full support. Then I asked my boss’ boss, and he said yes too. 2 years later, I uprooted my whole life and moved across the world to a new country with my wife. Biggest life changing event I’ve had so far.
I moved from Sweden to France and that started out with a girl friend asking me out of the blue if I wanted to do a (studying) year in France? Sure why not?
That sounds very familiar. Made a comment to my department leader back then that we should have someone to keep an eye on the quality of our partners in Asia. About 2 months later all my belongings where in a suitcase and I was on the plane with a one way ticket. That was nearly 10 years ago. In hindsight the most important decision in my life (so far).
Forgot a lighter which has so far led to 2 weddings and 5 kids?
In the first week of school, a buddy and I wandered around with beer and joints to various dorms but forgot a lighter. Asking around for one, we made a new friend. Fast forward a couple years, “new friend” let me know about a home for rent opening up. I rounded up some folks (including original buddy) and we rented it. Except one guy was gone for the summer. So, a gal came from out of town to live with there. We became friends, she fell in love and ended up moving here. Between her, her best friend and sister they’ve had 5 kids with partners mostly from that original friend circle.
So, if I had remembered a lighter way back in first year, we wouldn’t have put a house of folks together, wouldn’t have met gal and her pals and thus a few weddings and kids would’ve happened differently or not at all.
Okay, I think you win on the “insignificant decision” part of this question. That’s hilariously butterfly-effect. You tell the story well; I bet you’ve told it before.
I did a show at the local theatre when I was 17. First time doing theatre. I had been homeschooled and sheltered my whole life for religious reasons.
Since then I’ve deconstructed my faith, learned I’m trans, have had sex without getting married gasp, tried drugs, came up with my own values and beliefs, all the usual stuff, and it can all be traced back to that small impulsive choice to do something that intimidated me and try theatre.
I mean, I’m sure I would’ve got out eventually but I’m happy things happened the way they did.
In a D&D game that I got in through Roll20 matchmaking. One of the players asks if I want to join another campaign with his friends, said yes.
One of those friends is now my fiancee that I moved states for. The original guy ghosted all of us in a harsh way but I’ll forever owe my new life to him.
Was bored one day and decided to watch Bojack Horseman since it had that guy from Arrested Development in it. It was weird, but funny, so I kept watching.
After a while, I started to recognize a lot of myself and things similar to my life, and since I was seeing someone else do this stuff, I knew that it wasn’t healthy or necessarily supposed to be funny if it were a real person.
It helped me to start understanding that all my life, I’ve had horrible depression that lead me to really sabotage myself and almost every relationship I’ve ever had with anyone.
I ended up talking to my doctor, and it turned out to be something that was very easy to fix, and as soon as I got on the proper medicine, I almost immediately started experiencing life in a new way.
It helped me come to better terms with a lot of my childhood, and I no longer felt a crushing weight every day and could deal with day to day events in a healthy way.
I’m still a damaged person who doesn’t quite understand a lot of things I think “normal” people understand, but I’m able to identify it and talk about it instead of it making me angry and frustrated.
I’m in an overall significantly better place now. I understand myself a good bit more, and I’ve come a long way in being a better person. I still carry a lot of emotional weight not that I realize all the bad things I’ve done to so many people, and I frequently feel the loss of those relationships, but it’s more a reminder of how far I’ve come instead of something actively hurting me still after all these years.
I really liked the show, and there’s a lot of fun things in it, but it’s hard for me to watch now, as it reminds me too much of old me. I do really love Paul F Tomkins though and listen to him on Threedom and I just saw him on the Comedy Bang Bang tour.
I never expected a talking horse to turn my life around when nothing else did, but I won’t complain.
In HS, a friend of mine tried to get me into MUDs… I played their favorite one briefly (it was very low pop and very mechanical) so they suggested another one they Admin’d for - I also very briefly played that (for like three days)… like five years later I didn’t have a good TTRPG group so I tried picking it up again and loved it… met my partner there, moved to another country… a seriously large chunk of my life can be drawn back to my friend asking me to try their game and me playing it for a handful of days then randomly deciding to try it years later.
Damn, that’s crazy! I got introduced to MUDs in high school as well by one of my best friends. It’s neat the people you can meet but never though to go any further and meet them in real life especially if you needed to go to another country.
I almost met a girl through one of those online kingdom building games (Utopia Jesus, it’s still going) but called it off last minute. Kinda wonder how my life would have been different if I had gone.
MUD stands (sometimes) for multi-user dungeon… it’s essentially a text based mmorpg that’s usually light on the “massive” (the more popular MUD I played on for a while had a max concurrent user count somewhere around 120) and they tend to be very focused on role-playing and descriptions rather than mechanics - though your mileage may vary, a few are extremely focused on the mechanics and pay little attention to role-playing.
It’s quite fun and the communities are always really welcoming, I’d suggest giving it a try if it sounds interesting!
When I was 9 or 10 I decided I wanted to dress up as a character from a show I was watching at the time for carnival.
Together with my mom I performed a web search in order to find images of that character.
We found a website specializing in that show and after a while I found out it had a forum attached to it. My mom allowed me to register there and I started to participate in it.
Most of my social contacts during my teen years were in online communities I found indirectly through that forum.
I wore 2 layered T shirts to the mall way back in the day when any deviation in style was seen as shocking, and this somehow caught the eye of a guy who was in a punk band, which got me into that scene, which, while I wouldn’t call it wholesome, probably saved my life, as I was so alienated at school and really unhappy.