Can't think of a time.
Almost entirely, within the constraints that my choices necessarily entail.
I don't know what "a more powerful life" is, and I'm not sure how to parse "as though you" (and I really don't believe in destiny).

Oh god SO MANY TIMES. I basically owe my career to a clerical error and my long relationship to being sick one day. I feel I have *some* measure of control on my life, that is the things are concern me directly (what goes in/out my mouth) but everything else is the random plaything of chance. HAIL FORTUNA.

And yes, asked the BF, he literally chose his Uni at random and it transformed his life completely.

Like if I didn't randomly win a cash prize for art cause someone thought I was an older contestant in an art contest I probably would have stayed in the Sciences. If my mom didn't get bad in a medical way we could've had enough money to send me to the Ivy I wanted to go to and not a smaller art school where I would meet a future business partner cause I liked her antique sketchbook. It's all chance. The thing is how you react to it.

So much of my life traces back to a decision I made to put myself in a position to be in the right place at the right time. The closest instance in the scope of the question would be my discovering the internet '91 or so and ultimately dropping out of my old career to pursue a degree in computer science and begin a new career.

Crazy: I was just telling my sister my own feelings about this. So many of life's events have been utterly out of my control --- illness, death of loved ones, chronic injury, and on the flip side, the big package of class and social privilege I was dealt at birth. All of those were out of my control.

But how I choose to respond to those events, good and bad, is well within my control, and I feel like that is the control that really matters. I strive always to behave not necessarily in the most advantageous way, but in the way that aligns with my moral core. That's the most important place for me to maintain control over my life: to be true to my beliefs and to myself. I'm not always great at it, but I'm always aiming for it.

Hmm, I didn't really think of illness as being an external influence, because obviously, sitting here disabled, illness has introduced some kind of warped fifth dimension into my life.

Not in control, don't want control, swim with the tides.

Ardiril, I was thinking not only of my own health (though my own largest health complaint these days is an injury, and even the woman who mowed me down said over and over that it was absolutely her fault, i.e., totally out of my control*) but of others illnesses.

My partner died young, through events out of my control. My life changed completely. How it changed was up to me, but it absolutely was going to change, no matter what I chose. My father became terminally ill, also through events out of my control. I chose to move closer to my parents.

But there are also the smaller, more serendipitous things, which I suppose this question is really asking about. I started seeing The Fella socially (not quite dating) during the exhausting, emotional period after my father left the hospital and came home for the last time. The Fella was AMAZING: supportive and kind and easy to talk to, and at some point I just let go and accepted this kindness and care, which was quite unusual for me. (I've always been something of a caregiver in previous relationships, but ours is much more evenhanded.)

I have often wondered: if he and I had started seeing each other sometime when I was more pulled together, would we be together now? I just don't know. I don't know if I would have seen how loving and supportive and strong he is. And I don't know if he would ever have seen me be vulnerable.

*which, by the way, filled me with terror in the weeks after the accident: last time, I behaved as carefully, correctly, and safely as I possibly could, an an inattentive driver plowed into me. How do I know it won't happen again?

And of course, the answer is "You don't. Now cross the street, sweetpea, because life isn't in your control anyhow, but you have to go on living it."

I have no control over anything, never have.

[I wrote a fucking book for my answers, so there's part of them here and the rest is here in a Notepad doc at Sendspace.]

When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence?

I wound up running (for the most part) an ice cream store (Rita's Water Ice, but close enough) while I was in school at Trinity for a season. I don't know what it was that made me nip into the local shop for a green apple gelati with vanilla custard. Normally, I can't make random little trips like that. Even more strange, I noticed the 'help wanted' sign in the window and actually asked the manager if he was still hiring. (This never happens! I never have this capability to be spontaneous and all that. The social anxiety makes it basically impossible.) He asked me how old I was and I told him I was 24 (IIRC) and asked me if I could come by the next day around 11 for a trial run....

How much do you feel in control of the course of your life?

It varies from day to day. Sometimes I think that I have more/less control than I actually do. I never have been one to be spontaneous and random, but sometimes when those kinds of things happen, I do wonder if there is something pulling the strings. Of course, that goes the other way too. I think my issue is not with having control (or not) of my life but whether or not I feel like I can trust myself to make *~epic~* decisions. I'm a planner....

Does living as though you control your own destiny lead to a more powerful life?

I don't know yet. I'm still working on getting control of my crap so any judgement I make now is biased. I'd like to think that it will. That at least may give me a little something to hope for.

And of course, the rest of my thing about Rita's has disappeared. Just imagine it was something hilarious and not Penthouse letterish.

I am in control of my life. I can't control a lot of what happens but as others have said, we can strive to respond with grace and intelligence and measured thinking.

My sister in law (someone I don't much like or respect, although she has no idea of that) just lets life wash over her. She makes poor choices, or more often, no choices, and then complains bitterly about the consequences. She allows others to clean up her messes and bail her out of the jams she creates. This is why I don't really respect her.

She says things like, "when I get my life back I'll do this or that" and I think WTF? this is your life, even though you work at a crappy job and you don't have much happiness, it's because you don't seek it out, you make excuses instead of plans and you lack any sort of self discipline.

So, no, I didn't choose for my little boy to be disabled, but I can work like crazy to help him adapt and make his way in the world. I can make choices about what is important to me and what to let go and how to live in a way that is true and honest.

As my brother says, we all have a choice .. are we going to be the hammer or the nail? I am The Hammer.

I was raised in a religious family, but by my teens I was finding it really hard to stick with that way of seeing the world. In my early 20s, I was on my own and had just moved into a new apartment (my third since leaving home) which was a loft, with huge windows overlooking a busy intersection in one of Atlanta's more crowded neighborhoods.

I spent my first night in this apartment, woke up the next morning and immediately went to the windows, because they were awesome. I looked down at the intersection and saw a car hit a guy walking in the crosswalk, throwing him 15 or 20 feet through the air. Traffic stopped, a woman got out of the car and started shrieking, and people flocked around the guy on the ground. I picked up my (landline- this was in the late 80s) phone and called 911. Someone put a raincoat over the guy laying in the street, covering up his face. I told the 911 operator where the incident was. The woman who drove the car was STILL shrieking.

That pretty much finished the job of making me an atheist right there. I could see no way a sentient god would have come up with this scenario, with someone dying on the pavement (he had the walk signal, as it turned out) while the person who killed him is wailing and screaming in grief and guilt on the sidewalk. I can't say my life "dramatically" changed because I was already headed this way in my thinking, but this was sure a kick in the ass down the road that I was headed down anyway.

As far as "control"... I can definitely see how the decisions I made in my younger days affect my life, some for the better, some for the worse. I feel like I have the ability to "influence" my life more than control it. I nudge it the way I want it to go, and it bumps up against obstacles so I have to nudge it again.

#68: When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence? How much do you feel in control of the course of your life?

I feel in control almost all of the time. In fact, I feel that as a responsibility, a bit of a weight. Yet, there are some incidences I look back on and note the working of luck, chance, fate, intercession from others, or other forces external to my control.

Leaving aside the giant boost and head start I got in life by having a good set of parents with their act reasonably together, when I look back at my life, I'm conscious of my personal determination from a very early age. I made decisions about what I wanted to do - how the fuck I even knew what that was, I can't tell you - and then methodically put pieces in place to do whatever I could to make them happen. Earliest, perhaps, was deciding I wanted to do a lot of things independently from my family - I found that summer camp programs were a good way to do this, to get away and live on your own while still safe and doing something approved, and I started going to camp at my request at 11, got my first camp job at 15, and from that point through the next 10 years, with a couple exceptions, worked in summer camps. That exposed me to lots of adventure and skill development and to the idea that anyone could find a community in which they belonged. Those early steps introduced me to people that generated further connections and possibilities and to ideas about how to find and create communities - and I'm still involved with many of the results of those decisions made, unaccountably, when I was 11 and just knew I should do something to bring wide influences into my life. Same with choices around college and career - I kind of identified the target and then gritted down to figure out how to make shit happen.

It's important to me that we all realize that our set of choices is totally defined by where we started. And I am lucky, lucky, lucky that I had the choices I did and that I met such amazing people and found out about such amazing opportunities. And I've spent lots of time in life feeling frustrated, stymied, and up against a wall. But I've always felt in control, always felt that when the going got impossible, I would identify Plan B and make it happen. I can't control every event that happens to me, but I can meet it with a sense of imagination and capability, and generate some choices.

When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence?
When I was a kid. There was no smooth sailing in my childhood. From one day to the next there was no telling what could happen. I think, because of that, I've never really learned to control my life if control is even possible.* I have, however, made a few decisions that changed the direction of my life (buying my first PC, moving to Washington).

*I have a strong suspicion that control of one's life doesn't exist. I don't mean that all is predestined, just that free will might not exist. All of our decisions are a result of what's come before in our lives. In other words: we can't help but make the decisions we make because of our past. I hope that makes sense.

I got my current job - my only job, ever - right out of college because of an afternoon I spent babysitting back in the seventh grade for the husband of a woman that my mother used to know. I love my job, and it adds to my happiness, and it's shaped me in so many ways. I can safely say that I would be a lesser person today if not for my work. And it all came out of that couple of hours...

In general, I feel in control of the things I can control. I liken it to driving a car: I can drive safely and well and respect the rules of the road; I can do all I can to keep things safe; but no one can control the other driver who swerves out of control. I control what I can, and I do it well, and I live my life like others are about to swerve out of control. Because they will.

Re: the last question...I think so. I've always felt like I am in command here, and that's pretty nice. I've led a life that would allow me to disregard almost everyone and everything else, if I wanted to. That's freedom, to me - the ability to just walk away.

My little sister was on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle when a 16-year-old failed to stop and rear ended them. I have dreams where I'm at the scene pulling her from the ditch, I'm driving her to the hospital but can't find it and can't get a good grip, sitting in that teen's car screaming with rage and going unheard. I've never felt more helpless than I do in thise dreams. My life has never been the same.

But like kangaroo, I feel most of my life is under control. I have friends who are in constant drama mode because they avoid making decisions and things just snowball and then they blame bad luck.

There's a Yiddish expression which roughly translates: Man plans, God laughs. Even as an atheist/humanist, this saying rather appeals (substitute "the universe" or "the fates" or "chance" for "God," as you will). I try to remember it whenver I think I have a hold on things.

These days, I tend to plan for a continuum of best to worst case scenarios, especially financially. What if I get laid-off? What if I get sick (long term/short term)? Same for Jon, for both (yikes)? There's unemployment, disability, etc., for a while, but income would be greatly reduced. We're in what Jon calls "austerity" mode at the moment, trying to stuff away some extra "just in case" money, while we're both relatively healthy (knock on wood) and working. I think it's a middle-aged thing, for me. Sometimes I wish I was a little more like this when I was younger; we'd probably be better off. I know I can't control all contingencies, boy, do I know that, but I can hopefully keep us out of a relative's spare bedroom (plan of last resort) or a homeless shelter (really, really last resort). Ironically, we're probably in better shape than we've ever been, financially, but I worry more. Go figure.

In short, no, I don't control a bloody thing, but I can create a bit of a safety net for us financially (hopefully) and maybe make some decisions along the way that could increase the chances of better outcomes, like getting a colonoscopy sooner than later, and maybe getting the ol' ticker checked out (Dad had colon cancer and both parents had heart disease).

I have to remind myself to lighten up some, too, though. Trust myself to deal with whatever comes up. I've been divorced; I've been unemployed for up to a year; I've been bankrupt; I've been seriously ill, had emergency surgery; I've dealt with multiple deaths in the family. And, unfortunately, I probably haven't seen nothin' yet. But life goes on. You plan, and adapt. What else can you do?

#68: When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence? How much do you feel in control of the course of your life?

On a whim in December 1988 I decided to get a tattoo. It was there that I met my first husband, leading to my moving out of my mom's house, purchasing my first house, and having two awesome kids. I had a different path in mind originally, and despite the fact that the marriage didn't work out, it has led to a long, winding, interesting life. There have been many, many other little choices that have changed my outcome all along my journey.

I make the best choices I can when faced with my options - that's about as much control over my life as I have. Life just keeps handing me things to choose from.

I loooove to plan and feel in control of my life, and yet it seems that all of the big things and most of the little things in my life happen to me unplanned. Go figure!