Subscriber JM writes:<\/p>\n
“I would love to know a handful of your biggest regrets
\nprofessionally or personally — or things you might have done
\ndifferently?<\/p>\n
“You might not have many since you’ve always done what you
\nlove… but I bet it would make for a gripping topic for your
\nletter too.”<\/p>\n
I’m not sure it’s all that gripping, JM, but since you asked, the
\ntruth is I have many regrets — because, like most people, I make
\na lot of mistakes, wrong choices, and bad decisions.<\/p>\n
Caveat: You may find some or all of these trivial. To you, they
\nmay be. To me, not.<\/p>\n
Here in no particular order are just 5 things I did or didn’t do
\nthat bug me; the list could be much longer:<\/p>\n
#1–Daughter.<\/p>\n
I got married at a younger age than my friends — 25.<\/p>\n
But my wife got cancer a few months after the wedding.<\/p>\n
Because of the radiation treatment, we were told to hold off on
\nkids for a few years.<\/p>\n
Then, we went through infertility.<\/p>\n
So we had Alex and then Steve later than we’d planned.<\/p>\n
We wanted a third child. Maybe a sister for the boys.<\/p>\n
But by then, we felt we were too old.<\/p>\n
And so we didn’t.<\/p>\n
Which I regret, because my kids are everything to me.<\/p>\n
#2–Bass.<\/p>\n
I played in my high school band, orchestra, and jazz band —
\nclarinet and baritone sax.<\/p>\n
One day, the orchestra teacher offered to teach me another
\ninstrument, one of my favorites — string bass.<\/p>\n
He gave me a couple of lessons, but I already had a lot to do.
\nAnd so I let it go. And never learned to play the bass. Which I
\nwish I could play today.<\/p>\n
#3–German.<\/p>\n
At the University of Rochester, we chemistry majors were
\nencouraged to take German.<\/p>\n
I took the required two semesters, but not more.<\/p>\n
As a result, I can’t speak or read the language.<\/p>\n
Which would have been useful to me, as in my career I have
\nwritten copy for a number of German companies.<\/p>\n
#4–Scientist.<\/p>\n
I got hooked on writing as early as high school, writing for the
\npaper, and then doing the same in college.<\/p>\n
I love being a writer, and would choose that if I had to do it
\nall over again.<\/p>\n
Still, it meant not pursuing what was my first love, chemistry.
\nAnd that too I regret more than a little; I even put up a
\nchemistry website to stay involved with it:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.mychemset.com<\/p>\n
#5–Novel.<\/p>\n
Like many writers, writing a novel was on my to-do list.<\/p>\n
But I never did it, because I never had a story idea I thought
\ncould sustain novel-length treatment.<\/p>\n
All my published fiction is short stories:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/amzn.to\/2hiHyk<\/p>\n
But no novel. And time is growing short.<\/p>\n
And finally, I do have a couple of ideas I think might work.<\/p>\n
So I’ll end this essay and get to work on the novels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Subscriber JM writes: “I would love to know a handful of your biggest regrets professionally or personally — or things you might have done differently? “You might not have many since you’ve always done what you love… but I bet it would make for a gripping topic for your letter too.” I’m not sure it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}