What's One Of Your Greatest Accomplishments In Life?

Sadly, it was quitting a very long cigarette habit. Quitting almost killed me.

R1 great job. If you do not mind me asking, how did quitting smoking almost kill you?

Tie:

Surviving parental abuse/neglect to have a weird/wonderful life.

Quitting smoking

Well since you asked…

#3 For Quitting smoking - I smoked 2 packs a day for 22 years - I would have smoked in the shower if I could. I haven’t had a cigarette in 15 years. I don’t know if I could quit again. - Hey OP - Congratulations on going to college and finishing while going through an illness. That is wonderful perseverance- I hope that your health is better these days!

I haven’t killed myself.

I empathize, OP. I'm the only person in my family who went to college. I also got a Master's degree after. I finished later than my peers because I had a two-year cancer battle in the middle of undergrad and had to drop out of school. It was a fucking nightmare. My education cost me a ton of money, but I don't regret doing it because it was something I always wanted.

After grad school, I had open-heart surgery to fix a defect I'd been living with since birth. Not really an accomplishment, but I legitimately thought I would die on the operating table. It was certainly a challenge, mentally and physically—possibly worse than the cancer diagnosis because it was something I'd been dreading my entire life. Getting through it certainly felt like an accomplishment. I long thought I was going to die before 30, but that's come to pass. Some days I wish I were more grateful to still be here, but that's another battle.

R7 = George Santos, one-upping OP

I was a faithful and steadfast friend and caregiver to my friends while they were dying of AIDS as well as an elderly friend who is impoverished and alone. I am frequently afraid of what I feel called to do, but I show up. Reliably.

I did have an ashtray. on my windowsill in the shower. I was a professional smoker.

Commercial pilots license.

After getting expelled from high school for cutting class & delaying entering junior college until I was 22, I studied hard & finished my Master’s in English Lit at 28.

"Surviving parental abuse/neglect to have a weird/wonderful life."

Hey, that's one of my ties as well!

1: Also survived abuse and neglect, getting those fuckers out of my life, and going on to become a fairly functional adult.

2: Pulling off a midlife career change, going into healthcare just as my old career was automated away. So not only did I survive economic forces beyond my control, change my life for the better as well as improve my income... I changed for the better, as a person. Among other improvements I found my courage, enough so that I did my bit during the pandemic. Which FYI was a lot worse than the public knows, and with the shortages of PPE I was absolutely risking my life. I never dreamed my life would take this kind of turn, but yeah, I actually grew up to be a person who stepped up in a crisis.

I have a couple: 1) I ran ten marathons in my 20s with a PR of 3:01:16; 2) I earned a living as an actor for a few years; 3) I migrated to a new country, got a Masters, and changed careers mid-life to become an RN, and weathered multiple professional nightmares the first four years that friends told me would have made them quit. I needed to list all these, because I'm struggling with depression right now. I hope that my next achievement will be to manage it more effectively and live a better quality life. I just started medication and will be going back into counselling. Wish me luck.

Congratulations OP. Well done. :)

I love all these accomplishments. Wow!

Congratulations R7, thank you for sharing your journey. I am very happy you did not die on the operating table.

R3 hugs to you.

R6 stay strong

R19 you should feel proud. You seem like a very wonderful friend.

R11 what a great accomplishment. I bet it is a thrill to be up in the air flying.

R12 wonderful success. Yowza

R13. Wow, I loved your story. Thanks for helping everyone during the pandemic.

R14 great job.

We are all very tenacious individuals. ♥️

Teacher who never got cynical, bitter, burnt out, used up, nasty. I like my time with youth, students, and will regret the loss when I retire.

I guess 1) living through high school; 2) doing very well in college; 3) living through insanely nightmarish Lyme infection of my central nervous system and having the persistence to keep looking for help until I found it; 4) never compromising my integrity or honesty for personal gain; and 5) all my ayahuasca experiences.

I am well aware that most of these 'accomplishments' are things that I survived or endured and which changed me, and not things that I accomplished of my own volition or ambition.

I studied creative writing and earned an MFA, and that was a hell of a lot of work but I don't really feel accomplished because of it. If I ever get a novel published, then I will be proud of that. So far, no lucj. But being so sick for so long, including major cognitive problems, really put a kabosh on my creativity and endurance.

Meeting, falling in love with, and still being happily married to my honest, helpful, sane, hot and handsome husband of 42 years.

Without whose help and support I would never have managed to get my MPA, care for my parents, his parents, and far too many friends at the end of their lives, buy and restore a couple of houses and an MGA, see the world in style, weather illness after illness, have a successful career, quit smoking 22 years ago, and having accumulated the resources we’ve needed to assure our comfort and safety as we age.

Without him I’d have missed an awful lot. With him I’ve done more than I could have ever imagined.

R18 so very touching. I actually shed a tear of happiness for you.

I saved a life.

Attorney- 24 years

Being a better father and uncle than I ever had

Loving my husband for 35 years

Being a good son when my mother got sick and died from cancer

Not getting a tower and shooting some people after being exposed to bigotry, stupidity, and meanness from high school to the present day

R12 I got my M.A. in English too—and I work in fucking accounting! I scrapped the idea of going for a PhD after some serious contemplation—you go further down that rabbit hole, and the job prospects get even more narrow. Academia is a graveyard, especially the liberal arts. I never dreamed I’d be working with numbers for a living, but life is weird.

R22, so you're a CPA? isn't A.I coming for you?

Master’s degree at 47 in a field I wanted to pursue since I was 15. Quitting smoking. Having a stable relationship with a man whose family screwed him up pretty bad, while my family’s instability was wacky and chaotic but not corrosive. We both work hard to be emotionally healthy at all times, and we (generally) succeed.

Being gay and not a whore.

R9 you are a good soul.

I have achieved personal goals, but I am most glad of being able to be there for loved ones who really needed care. One was a lover, who died quite young after a five year battle with cancer. Another, my aunt who lived to be 91, autonomous for 88 years. The last few were rough, but I was able to give her the security of knowing she could rely on me. I lived with both, and did my best to see they got the best care while maintaining as much dignity as possible.

My sanity.

Wow all these are great.

I loved and was loved.

That I managed not to break my arm patting myself on the back while humblebragging on an anonymous gay posting forum.

My life is my greatest accomplishment. I look back and I have to pinch myself that I've done so well for myself with so many challenges.

-successfully weathered suicidal depression/hospitalization in early 20s

-first in my family to get a doctorate after growing up under the poverty line at times

-have a stable and loving spouse of 5 years and 10 years in a relationship

-grew up with crippling social anxiety and now can teach in front of others (academia is a tough nut to crack and am still trying to find a way in so I don’t adjunct anymore)

-started my own business with my spouse that is still going

-have an amazing 11 month old daughter that I was privileged to take pretty much a year off of work to raise (just work a few hours per week)

I have some health issues but feel very optimistic about where I’m headed in life at this stage. The world is chaotic, but there’s beauty if you block out the BS. I’ve been a pessimist most of my life and am trying to show more gratitude for my privileges and experiences—and it’s working so far. My best to all of you DLers weathering your own challenges.

Despite being poor white trash attending a state university in a degree program where I was the only student for four years and clawing my way into a prestigious NYC internship, where most of the other attendees were from Ivy League or international colleges.

Winning multiple episodes of Jeopardy!

Quit Smoking. I smoked from age of fifteen to forty (and I loved every fucking single minute of it), and I finally decided that cigarettes were going to kill me, so I gave up the habit (I have been smoke free for thirteen years)

Quit Drinking. Never an alcoholic but pretty damn close

I lost over 70 pounds just by exercising an hour a day and watching my diet.

I am a HUGE music fan and I have attended hundreds and hundreds of concerts. I have seen most of my favorite performers

R35 wow, just wow. Great Job.

Making and saving enough money to live independently - after a childhood of desperate poverty and familial dysfunction. Maintaining a 24 year relationship. Surviving a crippling disease and not letting it stop my life from progressing and enjoying as much as possible.

I was an uncompromising visionary!

I fought for women's rights and abortion in the 70s and I was the first woman to be promoted to management in my company in the 80s.

I finally quit smoking. It took years and years. I did it by switching to vaping and making my own juice to vape. I slowly weaned myself off nicotine and quit vaping.

R39 wowza, now that is an accomplishment. Way to go.

I am 66 years old and have been working on a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies since August of 2019. God willing, I will defend my dissertation a week from tomorrow and graduate on Friday, May 12 with my doctorate, just shy of my 67th birthday. My spouse and I will celebrate our ten year anniversary in October. And I have been sober and actively involved in 12 step programs since 1986. This last thing is probably what made the other two things possible.

R41 we are all rooting for you. Dr. Andy.

[R41] Excellent, Andy. And my story is very similar. Despite having grown up in an alcoholic household, frequently below the poverty line, I managed to work my way to a PhD from a R1 University, with a free ride most of the way. The PhD is in Theatre History, which was always my passion, so I got to earn my living doing something I really love.

July 4th 2022, I celebrated 36 years "clean and sober." Though it's not always been a cake-walk, one day at a time I did it.

I own my own home, and am retired after teaching for 25 years at a small liberal arts University. And while I loved teaching, directing, and assisting my students in beginning their careers, I--slowly, but surely==became a dinosaur. I wanted to teach the way I had been taught, but that is no longer the way students learn.

I have a loving circle of friends (though not all of them have the same access to my life). I've had three long term relationships, but have been single for a little over 25 years. And, truthfully, I'm fine with that. I've tried dating a few times over the past few years, but it was not to be. Either the intellectual engagement and laughs were great and the sex was mediocre, or the sex was great and the guys had no intellectual curiosity, or sense of humor. I was never able to put the two together.

I greet each day with happy aspect, and am largely "happy, joyous and free." Pretty remarkable, if you ask me.

And I have LOVED reading everyone else's greatest accompplishments. In these days when "life itself seems lunatic," it restores some measure of faith in the indomitability of the human spirit.

R43 wow, great accomplishment, too.

I really like this thread. One can spend a lot of time mulling over lost chances and regrets, but it is far better for one's emotional well being to focus on accomplishments. In many ways, life is an endurance test. It is a good practice to pause, assess, and recognize the worth of effort and goals. Keep on, OP!

Surviving breast cancer with my credit rating intact. --Frau

I loved and was loved.

[quote] [R18] so very touching. I actually shed a tear of happiness for you.

MARY.

R48 yahoo, I got a Mary. I really did share a tear.

"One can spend a lot of time mulling over lost chances and regrets, but it is far better for one's emotional well being to focus on accomplishments."

It's true! I was raised by a hypercritical mother and learned the habit of self-criticism far too young, and would self-destruct whatever bits of self-esteem my mother left available... but the truth is, I'm actually an okay person. I mean I'm still a mess in some ways, but in others, well, I've accomplished a lot, set out to do things nobody thought I could do and did them, I've fixed myself in a lot of ways, I've helped others, and I haven't abused children as I haven't had any. I'm not that bad.

[R41] for anyone following, my dissertation defense was successful and I will be graduating with my PhD on May 12.

R51 yahoo! Way to go Dr. Andy. What a major accomplishment. Everyone’s accomplishments are superb.

Oh man…this isn't going to sound like much of an accomplishment at all, but it's the only thing I can think of and is something I've been thinking about for more than 20 years.

I graduated college and graduate school and both just felt like regular steps that I had to take in my life and I felt no sense of accomplishment over either of them.

But I used to live in the French Quarter and I've seen a lot of weird shit there. And I am NOT a confrontational person.

One night I was walking down the street with my boyfriend, and there were a lot of people around! And across the street, I heard a woman crying and saw a man slapping her hard and repeatedly and screaming at her. There were so many people on the street. I just couldn't believe nobody was helping her.

I don't know what took over my body, but I ran across the street, grabbed the guy by the back of his jacket, and I literally threw him about 6 feet down the sidewalk onto his back. And then before he could get up, I had my fist in his face, and was telling him that if he even tried to stand up, I would stomp on his face until his family couldn't identify him at the morgue. And I told him if he laid another finger on that woman, I would find him (like I even could) and I would kill him. He kept his hands in the air the entire time saying "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I won't touch her!"

I've never even been in a fight in my life.

I asked the lady if she needed help and she was crying but she shook her head no, so I ended up walking away with my boyfriend as if nothing had happened. My boyfriend looked at me and said "oh my God. I can't believe you just did that." And by that point, I was shaking and I think I said something like "Ohhhh gurrlll! I can't believe I did either!" (instantly back into Mary mode!)

Neither of us had a cell phone or I would've called the police. And I worried for years afterwards that as soon as they got home, he probably beat her or killed her, and that I made things worse.

But I hope I scared the shit out of him, and he never laid a finger on her again.

Like I said, not really an accomplishment.

OK, I'm clearly fucking crazy for posting r53.

I'm an HIV researcher. I worked on the PrEP clinical trials and got it all the way through FDA approval. THAT'S an actual accomplishment that I should be proud of. But I posted that story instead.

I think of things like school and work as things that I just have to do. What I posted was something that I didn't have to do, and that's why it was the only thing I could think of.

My lasagna with roasted eggplant 🍆 and marina sauce.

[quote]My lasagna with roasted eggplant 🍆 and marina sauce.

I know what an eggplant is, but even seeing the 🍆 emoji makes me instantly thknk you put a dick in your lasagna. I trust you didn't.

I wrote a book.

I spent as much time as possible with my incredibly independent mother after she was forced for health reasons to slow down and move into assisted living.

My brothers were content to just leave here there, knowing there were aids and three meals a day.

I visited often from out state, staying for weeks at a time. I made sure she got out, saw friends from college, saw cousins, who had little kids; she loved being around them.

I talked to her and interviewed her about her life one night. She's gone now but I have about 45 minutes of a long talk where I just asked her about her life and everything. She opened up about a lot. I need to listen to it sometime. It's been too painful.

r53 u may have saved her life

[quote][R53] u may have saved her life.

I may have also caused more harm.

I attended a domestic violence training for work (I still don't know why my boss asked us to. We didn't do anything that had anything to do with domestic violence, but it was still a good learning experience) and the thing I remember most was that if your instinct is to tell a victim of domestic violence to just leave, don't. It can actually put them at more risk. It can infuriate the abuser so much that they'll retaliate harder or even go through with things they've only ever threatened like killing their victim. It's safer to have a professional involved to get them out of a dangerous situation to a safe place.

I know that sounds counterintuitive and goes against our instinct to help, but it takes an average of something like 7 or 8 attempts to leave an abusive relationship before someone is successfully out.

I scared that guy, but I bet I really embarrassed him and pissed him off. And he couldn't take it out on me, but he could take it out on her.

I wish getting a police officer immediately had been an option.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed and asked someone to find a policeman and not left until the cops were there. (But I probably would have still threatened to curb stomp him)

Being my mother’s sole caregiver for the last year of her life, allowing her to remain at home prior to dying of Alzheimer’s.

Published a novel. No one read it, but it's out there.

Not dying.

Being good to animals.

I am a better person than I was in my 20s, a lot more laid-back and grateful, also I let go of dreams and goals that didn't fit me in the first place and picked new ones. When I meet people my age who basically never changed since 20 years ago, I'm always a little sorry for them. As a result, I'm less of an insufferable asshole than I used to be and I count that as an accomplishment.

[quote]I talked to her and interviewed her about her life one night. She's gone now but I have about 45 minutes of a long talk where I just asked her about her life and everything.

Was the book about your mother?

My grandmother wrote an autobiography, but it was the 70s and she never was able to get it published. I've read other things she's written, and she was an excellent writer. But her life, especially after my father was born, was very traumatic. She probably had depression, but it being the 1970s, my grandfather (her husband) had her committed to an institution where she was on and off for about five years. I'm sure whatever was in that autobiography would be interesting to read today and would be shocking. I know she went through electroconvulsive therapy and some other pretty brutal stuff.

After my grandmother died, I asked if he knew where the manuscript was. And he said she burned it.

r53 and r54, before reading your posts, I was thinking about posting a similar accomplishment in medical research/drug development, but then thought of situations in which I'd intervened when someone was being attacked -- verbally (racially motivated) or physically -- on public transit. But by no means as butch as you;) and also in situations in which I took often thankless leadership roles in defending friends or family, against my usual passive nature. I would have had the exact same concern as yours about the woman you helped, but you did the right thing. It showed her that someone cared, and it showed the asshole perp that someone else sees his evilness. That could have been transformative.

My contributions to medicine were significant, but I was doing the job I set out to do. My work helped patients and helped make a lot of people (not so much myself) wealthy, but I was a cog in a machine. I'll remember the times when I stepped up and did the right thing.

BTW, chances are high that you and I have professional connections in common and will leave it at that.

Meanwhile, wish I could accomplish getting over insomnia and not lurking on DL in the wee hours!

R64, insomnia is also something we share in common apparently!

At a four-way stop in Portland one morning, I sat fifteen cars back from the intersection. The side streets would have led me back to the same intersection that was barely moving. After waiting ten minutes and getting five cars back, I saw the problem.

A teenage man and his female friend were stuck in a stalled car in the middle of the crossroads. I pulled to the side of the street, approached the kid and asked him what was wrong. He explained that the car had stalled and his father told him never to move a car in an accident.

I told him that a stalled car wasn’t an accident, he him put it into neutral and pushed the car out of the way. I then directed traffic to get the flow back to normal. People showed their appreciation for the help.

It was a small thing that anyone could have done and I am proud that I decided to do it.

[quote]academia is a tough nut to crack and am still trying to find a way in so I don’t adjunct anymore

Oh man, good luck with that (and I mean that sincerely). I've worked for multiple universities but always as research faculty (and always non-Senate faculty where I wasn't allowed to even vote). I was asked to adjunct one 3 hour course for a semester and they offered me $3,000. I thought, ok, so I'll spend 4 hours a week preparing lectures, 3 hours a week teaching, probably 5 hours a week grading assignments (at home until 10 pm), and let's say 30 hours for office hours for 15 weeks? That's $14 an hour!

Fuck no!

If I do it, you're only going to offer me TWO courses next semester, you'll never hire me as an associate professor. I'll never be a full professor or get tenure and that's all on top of the already 40 hours a week I'm doing research.

Pass.

no. r63; the book was about someone else

due to COVID, we weren't able to have a proper memorial for Mom; I still want to and will do it at some point; surprise, siblings aren't on board. (Family indifference is the worst.)

I'm sorry your grandmother's book was lost; I have some home movie reels I need to get transferred to digital; a sibling took the majority of them saying he'd get them all done; never heard about it again; fortunately, I made sure I got a few.

[quote] He explained that the car had stalled and his father told him never to move a car in an accident. I told him that a stalled car wasn’t an accident

He sounds kind of dumb.

Of all the titles I've won, my DL win remains my sentimental favorite.

[quote]I'm sorry your grandmother's book was lost.

My father told me it was lost, that she burned it. But I halfway suspect that when my father passes, we'll be going through his things and will find a copy of it.

I can remember my grandmother telling me about writing the book when I was a kid. She idolized Laura Ingalls Wilder. So I expected it was some folksy tale of her growing up. My father said he read a very small part of her manuscript and had to stop. He said it was the most disturbing thing he had ever read. He didn't tell me what he read or what it said, but I could tell it really upset him. My guess is that it was more about her time being institutionalized than about growing up. And maybe she talked about her kids in a less than positive way. I don't think she would've written that she hated her children, but I can imagine her having written she wished she never had them.

My grandmother lived with us when I was a child before my sister was born, in an apartment at the back of our house. She was my caretaker until I was at least five years old. So to me, she was my lovely, beautiful, caring grandmother. But to my dad, apparently she had a very dark side. I don't mean evil, I mean troubled.

My dad likes to think he knows a lot about health and medicine. He really doesn't. He was an electrical engineer. I work in healthcare. And he swears she was schizophrenic. I've tried to explain to him, people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder don't develop it at 40 years old. And they're not able to go on and have a 30 year career as a registered nurse after they've been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. She may have had bipolar disorder. But there's no way she was schizophrenic.

R68, I'm also sorry to hear you lost your mom. I lost my mom during COVID as well and we didn't have a funeral and what we had as a memorial was not what I would ever call a real memorial. Neither my father nor my sister wanted to do it. My sister had planted a memory garden in my mom's honor, and I stood in her backyard, sprinkling ashes in the garden, while my dad and sister watched from her second story deck. They didn't want to participate. I asked if they wanted to say anything, and they both said "nope". They both loved her, extremely. But my sister and my dad are like peas in a pod. They're both closed off emotionally and so guarded with their feelings. I was like a carbon copy of my mom. Outgoing, emotional, talkative. My dad and sister just aren't.

Surviving.

R73 I hear you.

Putting the bottle down

R61, anyone who manages to get a novel published has not had "a punt of a life." (Outstanding metaphor, BTW!) You not only wrote a full-length work of fiction but got it PUBLISHED. Holy fuck. That's huge.

Like R17, I earned an M.F.A., after which I knocked myself out writing two short-ish novels and a collection of stories that I marketed like a meth whore to every N.Y. agent I could find. No takers, no interest, and hence no publication. Getting a novel published is a rare accomplishment, and you should be proud.

So many of the posters here leave me in awe.

I've never been dumped.

Turned down an extremely important job in order to quit working and start writing instead.

At the time, it was the most nerve wracking moment of my life. But it worked out very well. I sometimes look back and wonder how I had the wisdom, and bravery, to do what I did.

Sometimes the best life decisions you make seem to come from a voice so far inside that you don't even recognize that part of you. But when it does occasionally speak, listen to it.

[quote]I've never been dumped.

I've never *not* been dumped? Is that an accomplishment?

Double penetration.

Sure, R79, if it makes you feel accomplished.

In 71 years, I have never smoked marijuana, drunk a cup of coffee or bottomed.

Being an absolutely arrogant, cheating, shitty, borderline criminal dirtbag to being a decent, ethical, faithful, law-abiding person with a college degree and a great life. Also, a former smoker!

[quote]In 71 years, I have never smoked marijuana, drunk a cup of coffee or bottomed.

Dude, you don't have that much time left. You better get on it and knock those things out before it's too late.

Getting out of 37k personal debt (auto, personal loan, credit cards) over the past 2 years. I have 10k saved now.

Getting away from a bad family situation in a dumpy town and getting a college degree.

Working 25+ years.

Having some money saved.

Having friends.

R86, good for you! I also have shitty family situation that I'm still trying to get away from

R87 me, too. My family sucks after I came out they all turned psycho on me! Fuck them. Although, It’s easier said than done.