Ok it might just be a downer of a week but the following kept on coming up in conversations starting with the sentence “If I could do it again I would have”:
- Have a gap year and travel the world as a university exchange student
- I would have kids and get paid to do a PhD combing creativity and flexibly with crèche
- I would have bought that house ten years earlier
- I wouldn’t have hang around so long in old relationships
- I would spend more time on learning to love me and be happy and not worry about what others thought
- I wouldn’t have worked so many part-time jobs
- I would have done more road trips
If I had to live my life again I’d make all the same mistakes–only sooner.
TALLULAH BANKHEAD, quoted in Evelyn Steinberg’s The Little Book of Wrinkles
Some comfort is knowing that every decision I have made was right with the information I had in hand at the time.
So this year I start the momentous 30s and we are making more decisions and making more changes. However the desicions are not just soley about me anymore. They are about me, my partner and our children. They might not be perfect and hindsight can be such a wonderful thing but as I keep reassuring myself, “I am making the best decisions with the information I have on hand today.” Wish me luck.
New Zealand New Years Day 2009
Ah, hindsight. I think about this a lot and especially identify with not hanging around in old relationships. I also think I would have taken more risks, and would have stayed in New York for a couple years after grad school.