I would have done the same things, but I would have worried less.
Exactly the same. I have a pretty charmed life, all things considered.
Invested a little differently and gotten laid a lot more in my college years.
I would chose a different college, different major, different city to live, different girlfriends. Not that I currently hate any of them. But why not try something different just for the heck of it.
If I had one thing to approach differently, at an early age, it would have been to exercise more regularly. I was a tubbo in high school. I’m in better shape now, but it’s a lifelong struggle for me to get regular workouts. I wish that I’d been better about that and developed better habits at a younger age.
Oh, and I wish I’d gone to more Dead shows…
I would have left the dance on time and not wrecked my car the very first night I drove on my own. This, I think, was the point at which things would have turned out differently. Of course, changing that may have meant that I would have been married to a shithouse crazy sex addict, saddled with several children in rural NC and widowed by suicide at 27. Changing something you did in the past wouldn’t necessarily give you a better future…just a different one.
I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
This, for me, except that it would have been in college, which is when I ballooned up thanks to the all-you-could-eat cafeteria.
Maybe being in better shape might have improved my social life, but even if it hadn’t it would be interesting to see what else about my life might have changed.
Almost everything I’d do differently is still correctable, but here’s my list:
Have more sex with my husband
Get a business degree in addition to my archaeology and Spanish degrees (both of which I’ve actually used)
Be more vigilant about my weight earlier - correcting bad habits is lots harder than not developing them to begin with
I’d’ve taken one of the free rides that had been offered at an okay state school instead of going to the good private school with a substantial scholarship.
I also wouldn’t have dated until I left college. And I never would’ve talked to my ex.
Yeah. My life’s pretty well fucked right now.
not get stabbed in that bar fight
I would not have sent that story to the campus literary magazine when I was eighteen. (That sounds ridiculously trivial, but the incident left me with a phobia about rejection letters and sending stuff out for review that has been a real encumbrance in my adult life. Also, most of the other bad decisions I’ve made have had some consequence, somewhere down the line, that I’d be hesitant to undo, but I truly can’t think of an upside to this one.)
I don’t think I would choose to avoid either the boyfriend or the job that broke my heart, but I would know not to get too deeply attached to either.
I wouldn’t change anything. I’m happy about where I ended up. I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of eliminating any mistakes.
I’ve always wished that I had learned to surf* and that I’d done Interrail in Europe when I was in college. But what stopped me was lack of money, so I don’t know how I’d get around that. Oh well.
*I didn’t live quite close enough to a good beach to be able to get there easily enough, much less have the cash to get a wetsuit and rent or buy a board. Then I moved away at 19 and never got that close again.
I would have gone to a formal educational program for deaf and hard of hearing kids. Done the res school option as a teen. Gone to camp earlier instead of only having three years there. Those three options would have changed my life SO much.
I would have realized years earlier that a full time job in my profession is virtually impossible to get anymore and headed in an entirely different direction.
I’ve got a bunch of degrees in different areas, including a PhD. If I had the whole school thing to do over, I’d make sure that at least one of them qualified me for a job that was easy to get anywhere I lived.
I would have tried to be prettier and more social and more fun. I would have met more people and spent more time partying in school… instead of taking heavy class loads to get those useless multiple majors.
I wouldn’t have slept with old men. I wouldn’t have slept with married men.
I wouldn’t have spent so much money, either. I can’t believe how much I shelled out for crap that other people made me feel that I needed in order to be “worthy”. I’d have sniffed out secondhand shops, rather than feeling I had to buy high-end retail.
Lastly, I’d have learned to sleep with earplugs, which would have made it possible to live in much cheaper housing during my twenties. Wouldn’t have rented a house. Wouldn’t have bought a house until after marriage.
I wish I had stayed with playing the violin. But I needed support that wasn’t there. There was a moment when I almost broke through anyway - I wish I could’ve tapped into that momentum and kept going.
And then, later, I wish I’d stayed with being a fine arts major in college. Though the alternative path I chose has had a lot of rewards.
On balance I don’t have huge regrets. It would’ve been nice to develop my talents further, but instead I worked on my personhood and I think that was a necessary choice.
Once you have children it’s hard to play this game, because you wouldn’t dare disrupt the chain of events that led to their existence.
I do wish I’d learned to eat healthy food at home, instead of eating out at restaurants and fast-food joints. I’m still working toward that goal.
Would have tried harder to get away from my original family earlier.
Would have stayed away from a certain industrial chemical.
Would have taken better care of my back.
Would not have given away a certain white cat. That one is, emotionally, the worst.
In about 1910 my grandfather, a young man, had a car, and swerved out of his way to try to hit a turtle, which he did. He regretted this very much all the rest of his days. This has motivated me to try to repay his debt to turtle society, and I have rescued dozens, even including some snappers in the 30+ pound range that didn’t feel like getting rescued. It is completely unreasonable to think this has any influence on grandfather’s debt, but I am still really happy about it. Weirdly, if he had had the choice between “spare that turtle” and “kill that turtle but in so doing inspire the rescue of dozens”, he would turn out to have chosen well. Beats hell out of me trying to make sense of such things.
Be bolder younger.
Learn to say no.
Recognize evil exists.