I would go back to when I was 16 and make the most important change in my life then, rather than waiting until 25.
Then I would go back to when I started community college and study chem or astronomy instead of computers, so that 11 years later I wouldn’t be struggling to make a career change.
But I wouldn’t go back to 1997 and convince my parents not to move up to Show Low and let the cats out (they disappeared), even though the aftermath was the saddest time in my whole life, because the mama cat probably wouldn’t be alive now anyway (she’d be 20) and the boy cat was an ornery cuss. I wouldn’t have my sweet beloved cats I have now.
Do I have regrets? Sure. But some of the awful things in life aren’t worth fixing.
There are lots of things I wish I had done differently with my life at various points (trying out for the baseball team in high school, for example, instead of being too shy to put myself out there, might have changed the entire course of my being). However, I don’t know that I’d be willing to give up where I am in life right now, either.
I’m fairly happy with who I am as a person, along with the woman I’m in love with and the friendships I have. I’m certain that I’d develop good relationships if I started over, but I can look at my life right now and say that it is plenty satisfactory, and I don’t feel the need or desire to risk starting over.
Now if you’re telling me I could keep my knowledge AND personality AND the people in my life AND my current source of income but just tack on another 20 or 30 years of youthful physiology? Sure, bring it on.
I know the exact moment I would have made a different decision. Things aren’t bad now, but a lot of misery would have been avoided if I had just not done that one thing.
But I believe in something like fate - not fate, just that all the infinite possibilities of the universe will intersect at certain key points, on both a macro and a micro - individual - scale …
… but with physics, or something, so it’s not really ‘fate’.
Version 1: I’d go back to 1984 and ask that girl out!
Version 2: I’d go back to the beginning of Grade 10 and try to become more social while I was still in high school. Maybe I’d ask that other girl out. I’d still study the things I did–math, art, languages, etc–but I’d keep in mind the general contours of the life I live now, enough to push me in the direction of art school instead of architecture school when I graduated. This, of course, would eliminate the events that led to Version 1, but what the hey. I’d also keep in mind the general outline of stocks, etc, enough to invest before the tech boom of the nineties and cash out before the bust.
(Hey, maybe it’s all the time travelers cashing out that caused the bust!)
I would definitely not go through my childhood again. Why repeat the same experiences that broke my spirit the first time around? Why go through several years of being hungry, dirty and ashamed of myself all the time again?
I don’t know if I’d do high school again, except to stand up to as many of the guys who used to bully me as I could. And by ‘stand up to’, I mean ‘punch in the throat and face as hard and as fast as possible and don’t stop punching until people drag me away physically, and repeat as often as possible’. It might be nice to get the grades I would have been capable of, had I studied seriously.
I’d join the Army again, but this time I’d take the combat medic job instead of food service specialist. But then, I’d have to serve 4 years or more to be a combat medic, and I might not have met the best girl of my life so far. Hard choice.
Knowing what I know now, instead of smoking cigarettes and drinking beer I’d have started lifting weights a lot sooner and I wouldn’t have smoked so much dope. I would have gone to more concerts, kissed more girls and saved money to buy a car a lot sooner. I would have stayed in college and maybe done medical school.
Of course I have some regrets, but my life has not turned out so unsatisfactory that I would take the chance of losing the things I love to change some little things.
I wish I would have never been so irresponsible and stupid as to get myself into this idiotic situation with my driver’s license. It’s going to be expensive and a hassle come January when I fix it. I wish I wouldn’t have been such a psycho for years. I wish I had learned to handle money better when I was younger and that I would have understood the importance of an education more. I wish that I had known earlier that my mother was nuts with grief and that she would come around eventually.
But I have a wonderful, supportive husband and family, two beautiful kids, and am continuing my education. Going back in time would only fix some material issues I can fix now anyway, while risking what I love most about my life (my kids, husband.). How could I look at my boys before I transport back in time knowing that I may negate their existence? Most of my time would be spent mourning. It would be like mourning a death, almost. I would know them, have memories of them, but never see them again. No way. Nothing I screwed up in the past is worth that.
Now, if I had suffered some major trauma or horrific childhood, my answer could well be different.
I wouldn’t change a thing, even the bad parts. They’re what made me who I am today, and I like that person. More importantly, I love my husband and daughter more than anything else in the whole world, and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would run the risk of losing them.
I like to think I wouldn’t change anything, but I wasted a few years that I wish I could do over. Just…a total waste. Nothing bad came out of it, but just wasted time.
I have a good life right now, and such time travel violates my general belief of no-regrets-living, buuuut, what with Linty Fresh said and everything, I admit it would be highly tempting. I’d love to go back to 7th grade and be king of the social heap, instead of the court jester.
Part of me wants to take the Skaldean route and say, “Be a better wife to my husband while he was alive.” But the truth is that while I had flaws, I’m a better person now for being a worse person then. I needed those experiences and revelations. I was an ethical infant.
Assuming we aren’t going to go back to a specific event, I would:
Finish college sooner. It took me 8 years to get my BA (with 3 years off to work,) and 6 years to get my MA. My friend finished his Ph.D within 8 years of high school. Now, I’m almost 40 and barely starting my career. Probably the only advantage I have is that my coworkers are in the same boat or ahead of me by only a few years.
Saving money: I made a boatload of money when I delivered pizza, but I blew it on strippers and alcohol. It was something like $18/hour, after tax. When I injured my back, I couldn’t do it anymore, and the money got a lot smaller really fast.
Keeping up with my writing: During the '90’s, I spent a lot of time writing and I was very proud of my abilities. In grad school, I stopped, thinking that it wouldn’t go away…it did.
Choose a different career path: I planned to be a teacher since 1999, but if I had known how much I would need to do outside of the classroom, I wouldn’t have done it. Probably I should have gone into computers, IS, or something like that.