I wish I had
It’s impossible to journey through this life without collecting a large trunk of regrets. I am not going to pull out and thumb through the serious ones here: but in pondering my past today, a few ‘wish-I-hads’ came to mind. I post them here as a way to acknowledge how small a vision I (we) have of what future-me will want or need.
These are not serious regrets about things that shape relationships, health or life-direction. Those are a bit too precious, and tender, to post online. These come with a smile of hindsight and maybe a little twinge.
I wish I had:
- Not stopped using 35 mm film in the early 2000s.
- Adopted a big ol’ .txt file to save thoughts, journals, links, bookmarks, lyrics etc. I love this format so much and it would be awesome to have such a trove.
- Sent more postcards.
- Taken a photo of every house & school, every home we visited and Church we passed through, and every holiday place we stayed. Each with a date and place labelled. The list of those is vast and jumbled beyond my ability to piece together. I have memories and I can’t place them.
- Discovered my ‘happy places’ sooner. E.g. the woods or gardens.
- Kept all my VHS, CDs and tapes, including cases, and my discman, walkman, minidisc player and early mp3 players.
- Similarly kept all early PCs and our MegaDrive.
- Kept a simple timeline log of key life events.
- Cut my hair shorter and settled on my personal style of dress earlier.
- Become a naturalised citizen.
- Not obsessed over “will I … won’t I” for romantic relationships quite so much.
- Learned Linux, MacOS and HTML; how to build and host a website.
- Learned the value of learning full time or 1:1 tuition when I still had it.
- Loosened up about social drinking earlier.
- Discovered how much better life can be with a boundaried work <--> rest rhythm.
- Not lent books to certain people.
- Played more games with people.
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