Not much. I would sleep with my first girlfreind. It would have been Her wish as well as mine. Not a bit deal in the scheme of things.

On the first day of the job, when I saw my supervisor arguing and finger pointing with a person that represented the mental health place I would be collaborating with, I would have just stepped out of the building, instead of getting in the company van, and walked back home and never come back. My boss was a verbally abusive bully for seven years in a time of recession.

Lets look at another revue of "a road less traveled". I too (Mr Frost) took the road less traveled. At first all seemed well, a gentle downhill gradient led me through the yellow wood for about an hour and a half, until I came upon a ford across a stream. This might have been quite a pleasant passage in times of drought but at this particular time of year it was an impassable raging torrent. So with saddened heart and lessened bravado I did a 180 and started to return in the the direction I had whence came. The gentile downhill walk that had previously seemed so pleasant was now an uphill climb. Well I thought it could be worse, it could be raining. Guess what? You got it, the heavens opened to make matters worse the grassy undergrowth concealed a large pot-hole which I inevitably fell into. Up to my waist in mud and seeing no way of escape I cried to the heavens for some deliverance. Just then there came along three stout fellows "my luck has changed" thought I. Not so as they demanded payment for their services ie. all my cash,phone and watch but not surprisingly they left me with this stupid fucking sat-nav.

I would have woken up sooner in my life. But also I probably wasn't ready earlier, and waking up now is better than not waking up at all. It's what I do now moving forward that matters.

I agree. I would have chosen a different profession. As it is, I have learned that the entire world is crazy, then I look back in time and can see how incerdibly stupid I have been. It's mind boggling. Is there a "do over?" Is this idea secretly why theists believe?

I would never have stayed on the Bamford Review of Adult Mental Health and Learning Disabilty so many years it came to nothing and the psychiatrists were so disrespectful of service users it was humiliating to be with them on any sub groups. I actually complained about a retired High Court Judge who had asked me sympathetic questions then blabbed what I had said about D.I.D to all his cronies. I faced him down and he apologised and withdrew but it was a battleground a lot of the time and we service users were serioulsly taken for ornamental mugs.

I keep thinking I should have gotten degrees in almost anything other than English literature, but sadly, that's what I was mainly interested in, and only did it because getting the degrees by studying good literature seemed like a racket!

And I seem born to teach, edit manuscripts, and discuss literature stuff. I even seem to be a natural ESL teacher.

Too bad it pays less in the US than working at a fast food place.
Here in Thailand, at least, I can live well doing it because of the low cost of living.

Be very grateful you found something you love. When I was 25 I gave up a promising career in advertising to play music full time. Less money more fulfilling life. No regrets.

I saved my ex wife's life, a year later we separated, a few years after she cost me everything,
I saved a brothers life at least twice, he is my evil shadow, the bane of my life.
With hindsight????

If knowing then what I know today, I’d have kept Dakota from going swimming that fucking day and I’d have kept Jake from meeting those people that other fucking day. The change would be that my son and my girlfriend’s son would be alive today. FTW

It's ok saying that but I'm still here. how do I know even if I did something that I know seamed better that this would be the case?

We are all the products of positive and negative decisions, events, turns in our lives. If we are decent people now, it took all those forces to make us who/what we are. If we are not, the same is true but the result is different. If you don't already, may you all love yourselves for who you are.

It's difficult to isolate one thing and there's always the notion that if I had done anything different my daughters wouldn't be here but I suppose I should have followed my instinct and gone after a more creative career rather then a conventional and safe one. I don't suppose I would be any better off financially but that would never have been a motivator.

I got damned lucky with my profession, I wouldn't change a thing.

I made terrible choices in life partners, particularly my first one; if I could have one "do-over" it would be to go back and somehow be a one-woman man. That's always been an ideal of mine. Whether it makes any sense at all is another matter; I suspect not. But there's always the girl you didn't have the courage to ask out or get to know, or other such "if onlys" and if I could magically reboot my life and yet know what I know now, I'd be curious to see how doing a few key things differently would really have changed my bottom-line contentment / happiness or not. I suspect not, but that'd be information, too.

Another thing that I'd change is to be un-beholden to religious ideologies. That mis-informed a lot of my poor life choices. I would have chosen different relationships, I would not have had children, a lot of things would be different. It would be hard, back in the 1970s, to find a woman who was indifferent to having kids and didn't believe in god, but I suspect I could pull it off if I had the clarity that I lacked back then.

Of course that's always the problem in life, you make so many consequential and hard-to-reverse decisions exactly when you are the least experienced / most naive / misinformed and the most hormone-crazed, and then it circumscribes so much of the rest of your existence from then on.

I’d have gone to college (as a young adult). There is essentially only one reason I did not go. I did not think it was available to me because I did not have money. Believe it or not, there was not even one adult in my life to ever ask me about college, much less told me anything about grants, scholarships, or student loans. I could have done and been anything; and I wish I had known.

I'd have taken the opportunity to go and teach English in Prague for a year. To this day, I cannot understand why I didn't pack a bag and go immediately... who knows how great that might have been!

I would change nothing.
Every single thing that has happened to me, and every choice I've made, have gotten
me to where I am now. Regret is pointless, and there is no way to change the past.
If there's something in your present that you don't like, now is the time to change it.

I can't go back and change anything, so a don't waste my time thinking about it.