(SDMB seems dead tonight :eek: So Hopefuly this old fave might help)
If you had to re-live your whole life knowing what you know now. what would you do differently?
I don’t mean you go back with knowledge of lottery numbers, inventions, big disasters etc. I mean you go back knowing what decisions you made, what things you did and didn’t do. So no “I’d win the lottery” type answers.
Me…
I’d at least make attempts to speak to a girl I’ve known from infant-school to the end of high-school (I had a dream about her just last night). I liked her the whole time, but virtually never spoke a word to her.
Not be such a misery all the time (thinking I had nothing going for me)
Think twice about who I choose to hang about with. (I had a few bad-luck ‘friends’)
I’d join some sort of sports team at school. Cricket maybe.
Join a Martial Arts club.
I’d choose a more interesting career path - Psychology, media studies, anything creative really.
Possibly re-consider my decision to move to the Isle of Man.
I think I’ve said this before, but I don’t think I’d do anything differently. Sure, I might be able to avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, but I’m sure I’d find a way to screw things up just as badly in a different way, and I’d likely miss out on some of the great things in my life that I stumbled on through dumb luck.
On second thought, I might go back to 1984 and pay my car insurance the day before the grace period ended.
I would do everything the same up to one point… about 4 months ago I moved without telling a guy I really cared for how I felt about him, even though I was pretty certain he felt the same way (and still does)… I caught up with him a couple months later and told him… and he had already met someone else.
Not to say something can’t change in the future with that but I would have told him before he met that other person.
I would have gone to college straight out of high school and I would not have dated anyone but my current SO (he’s my older brother’s friend from high school, I"ve known him for a long time) because he’s amazing, wonderful, and truly loving, and I’ve been down relationship HELL road to finally find the guy that’s right for me. I could have saved so much time and pain if I had known then what I know now. Ilsa, thanks for bringing up all the crap and pain, man. Regret doesn’t go away.
Even though a fairly large number of things have happened in my life that I wish I could erase, do over or not at all, there is this to consider. If I had done one thing differently, I might never have ended up where I am now, with the dream wife and dream job and dream location. There hasn’t been any part of my life that I’ve enjoyed so much as the last 8 years, and that is all due to finding my wife.
If I’d taken a different career path or had different interests, it may not have led to the circumstances under which we met. She is the single best thing that ever happened to me. So whatever other crap I regret from days gone by, it has made me who I am, taught me what not to do, how not to be, and made me become worthy of such a wonderful wife and the comfortable life I now lead.
Woah, woah. I didn’t catch this thread on it’s first go round, but I found it in a random vanity search. What did I do?
I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m really sorry if I brought back bad memories. It wasn’t intentional. I honestly can’t think of anything I might have said.
I would have asked for help a lot more. I never used to tell anyone when things were wrong or ask anyone for help, even sometimes when I had a real right to help, like in school. If I did it again I would demand help from parents and teachers. I never wanted to be any trouble to anyone.
I wouldn’t have let my parents talk me out of applying to the New York School of Visual Art. Hey, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in, but maybe, just maybe I would have. Even if I didn’t get in, I wouldn’t have let them talk me out of getting a straight Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting, instead of wasting my time on advertising.
Failing that, I would have taken a year off after high school and before college - worked and traveled.
I would never have gotten mixed up with the first love of my life or the last one, or if I did get mixed up with them, I’d have gotten unmixed a heck of a lot sooner.
Since this thread has been bumped I’ll take the oportunity to add a bit of recent personal insight to my OP.
I no longer regret moving to this Island.
I regretted it because it meant the loss of a few close friends.
I no longer regret it because I am old enough to not need friends. (although I will not avoid aquiring them). I also no longer regret it because If I am being honest my life would have gone nowhere had I not moved.
I will always miss my friends, but I will not let the sense of loss hold me back.
I would have walked out on my parents a few months after getting my first Programming job and probably not have spoken to them for a good ten years or so.
I would have worked harder and saved money to do this. Then as soon as I had one year of experience under my belt, I would have moved out of state.
In that new state, I would have started Martial Arts and not worried so much about friends and what they think.
I let other people’s expectations and demands run too much of my life. It’s a pattern that I am only just now breaking, at the age of 41.
I don’t need or have to do anything anyone else wants or thinks that I should do. Neither do you. You run your own life, let them run theirs.
I would have not married the person I married. I would have gone to university straight out of high school instead of waiting eight years. I would have done a degree in something with better prospects than philosophy/political science.
I wish I’d had the confidence earlier not to care so much about what other people thought about me. had that been the case, I probably would have been more relaxed around other people, especially the guys, and maybe I would have had a social life as a teen that extended beyond babysitting for people who had social lives.
Of course, had that happened, I might not have been in the right place at the right time to meet my husband… so maybe I wouldn’t change anything.
[ul]
[li] I would have never wasted my time and money on an ex-girlfriend who nearly ruined my life.[/li][li] I would have spent more time on my homework in college and I would have done more to further advance myself and sought out a higher degree.[/li][li] I would have quit my first job and told the manager to go screw himself, instead of sticking it out in spite of the low pay, the overall working conditions and the asshole managers I had to deal with. Even as a college student, there would have been better jobs for me at the time than working in fast food.[/li][li] I wouldn’t have gone in on a get-rich-quick scheme with a friend who had me convinced that I could make money “the easy way.” :rolleyes:[/li][li] I would have voiced my objections more and stood up for myself instead of just taken things as they came.[/li][/ul]
On the other hand, things have turned out okay for me so far and there are good people I know and things I have that may have not come my way otherwise. It’s hard to say where my life’s path would have led had none of the above happen.
