If you could go back in time to the beginning of any decade in your lifetime and start fresh would you do it, and if so, what decade would you pick? For the purpose of this exercise the refresh point would be 0001 hours, January 1st, XXX1, and you would retain any memories you currently have.
- I’d save money anyway I could until I hit 18 and then I invest in the stock market.
Prior to that I’d bet on football games with classmates.
- That was just before my life fell apart, and I would have done some things differently if I had known.
I am not sure I would do it now because I somehow recovered from all the mistakes I made and am a stronger and wiser person for it. If I just wanted to avoid some of those major problems in the first place, I would pick 1991. It was the year I graduated from high school and started college. I could do anything from that point and avoid some things that didn’t work out.
Hey now wait a second. I saw TNG - Tapestry. I know what happens when you do these sorts of things.
My life may be pretty rough right now… very rough in fact. But there isn’t a thing I’d go back and change or do over.
If I HAD to pick, I guess it would be 2011, January 1st and I wouldn’t waste my time trying to get into the Navy NUPOC program.
But fuck me when time would come around to meet my now-ex boyfriend. Do I get “back” together with him (for him for the first time, but for me with all my memories I would already love him deeply from the beginning), knowing that he’s probably not going to be happy with me in the long run. I could change and try to do things differently and make him happy… but I doubt it’d do anything.
On the other hand, do I just avoid the relationship all together the 2nd time around? Do I try to become friends with him?
Very odd to think about.
I vote for just staying where I am in time!
2011
I’d have both my kids already and not have moved south.
I don’t particularly want 1991 or 2001. What I would like is January 1, 1996. There are a lot of mistakes I made that year that I would love to fix.
I guess if I had to, I would do 1991 and just enjoy high school again.
I wouldn’t. As crazy as my life is now, it’s the life I’ve longed for. I’m married to the woman I want to be married to, I’ve got a kid I’m crazy about, got a job where I’m valued (though I wish they wouldn’t keep on assuming I can do the work of two people), we’ve got more than enough money, and in a dozen years, I’ll retire comfortably.
2011? I’d get to relive the past two years with the Firebug, so that’s got something to be said for it. But I want to find out what lies ahead, not relive the recent past.
And in all the earlier decades, no Firebug. No guarantee that he would even be born, let alone that we’d get the opportunity to adopt him. 'Nuff said.
- I had discovered the “bad” things in life but it had not gotten out of hand yet… Graduated high school that year had my whole life in front of me and hadn’t made any life altering mistakes yet!
'81. Find Bill Gates and give him the start up money he needs for his fledgling business. For a 2% return for life.
1981 for me as well, for many of the reasons listed above.
And are you such a man that has the power to grant that wish?
Tempting, but no thanks.
I would undoubtedly fix some mistakes and almost certainly make myself a very wealthy man. But I cannot be certain that subsequent events of the reboot would ultimately lead me to meeting (and recently marrying) my SO. I think I’ll stay right where/when I am.
1992, when I graduated college. Don’t get married, do the foreign travel thing, take advantage of what you have when you have it.
Tempting. Unfortunately, every mistake I would like to fix has led to friends I wouldn’t have otherwise met.
- I’d be seven months pregnant and be able to re-do everything with my daughter, avoiding all the obsessing, messing up, and heartbreaks. Or so I’d like to think. There are definitely things I’d do differently.
Also, I’d get to have her be a baby again. Worth it, for just two years of do-over.
Are you me? Yes. Yes, I think you are!
May, 1992, finishing up my 6 week trip thru Europe, fork in the road: I would tell my parents to sell my truck so I could keep on traveling. Instead I came home, got hired back to the same job I had before, and kept on that trajectory.
It is so easy to have the fantasy, but I am grateful for the things I have in my life today: marriage, two great kids with great futures, a home, a steady job to bitch about, savings, health insurance, vacations, etc. I guess I would not change a lot, but it sure would have been nice to see where the other path leads.
Can I wait on this? I’d like to wait until I’m 80 and then rewind to age 12 (can’t go too early or the memory thing gets weird). I want a second lifetime, just because I’ve enjoyed this one so much so far.
I don’t want to reboot my life anymore, I want to delete it. But if I had to choose it would be 1981. I was 19. I would get away from my mother asap. Head to San Francisco and try to make a life for myself. Also I would go to college to study science and computers.
Hells yes, I’d do this. I feel that I have essentially thrown away the potential of my present life.
On 1 January 1981, I’m 17, at home with my mom and stepfather, about to start the last term of high school, and about to make one of the most momentous decisions of my life… which I am now convinced I decided wrong.
I might have a chance in asking That Certain Girl* out, but that ship may already have sailed.
If I have memories of the old future, I at least know that Computers are going to be Big. I mean, Really BIG. Even though it would take a couple of decades for this “internet” thing to really start weaving itself into the common man’s life, the idea would start showing up soon. So that would be a direction to head in.
But many others have mentioned this and similar things.
Even without detailed memories of the future, there would still be a tone to my future life that I would remember.
The biggest thing for me would be knowing about my social handicaps, the face blindness and all, while there was still time to do something about it.
The second-biggest thing would be seeing what happened when I made that decision. The decision was to go to architecture school instead of art school. I essentially decided the way I did because I could not imagine how an artist could make a living. In other words, I was unable to imagine the social networking that might lead to publicity and sales success… though it would be long before I could understand that.
I would make the decision the other way. I would go to the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, to pursue art and storytelling. That would be the big difference from which all other differences would flow. I would not meet any of the people I knew in my old life after that, and I’m certain I would grieve somehow. But there would be new ones…
I’d also know that the horrors of team-sports-oriented Phys Ed weren’t the only way to get fit, and go to the equivalent of fitness clubs to get my exercise, if they were around. If they weren’t around yet, that’s another thing to invent. 
But many of us never achieved that dream. As a person with no marriage, no kids, no house, no steady job, and no vacations, that seems like utopia to me. (At least we have provincially-run health care here… or I’d be in REAL trouble.)
[sub]*You know the one. Everyone remembers someone like that in their past.[/sub]
I would reboot back to January 1st, 1981, and skip the whole first wife fiasco. That little adventure cost me my health(both mental and physical) and eventually put me in debt for tens of thousands of dollars.