Regrets

By: Meradeth Houston on 2:02 PM

I had a great evening out with my friend, finally getting around to see The Time Travelers Wife. I adored this book, and the movie was pretty good. Thankfully I didn't bawl quite as much as I did at the end as I did while reading it. At any rate, while running afterward, I started thinking--if there were one thing (or more than one) that I could go back and tell my past self to avoid, what would it be? Would I win the lottery, like in the movie? Probably not (okay, only if I only had one shot, otherwise, yeah, I'll admit it, I would give myself the winning numbers and move to Tahiti).

Really, there are two things I might tell myself to do differently: not go to grad school, or to never start writing. The first because although grad school's all fine and dandy, it's been a long haul and often I wonder if it's worth it. I probably could have gotten my masters and taught at a junior college and been plenty happy. The other option, to stop writing, is something I think about from time to time. I love to write, and I know it's a big part of who I am, but it's also a massive time-sink and what do I have to show for it? Some lousy, not very original stories that I had a little fun writing while not tending to my husband or other school stuff? I tell myself that it should be about anything other than doing it for me, but I'll admit that some part of me wishes there was something more to it. Or that I just didn't suck.

Anyhow, in the world of regrets, these are my big ones. I'm not sure if they're really regrets, yet, but they certainly feel like it sometimes.

Of course, there's always that time I got stuck in the boy's locker room in junior high. I certainly could like without that!