Regrets

"It's really cool. The only problem is that it's hard to find anything on it."

- Adam Katz, from a presentation on the World Wide Web he gave for a class on multimedia we both were taking in graduate school, April, 1994.

Jared Christopher over at Completely Naked has a post on regrets and what he'd do differently.

What do I regret?

I regret not working at an Internet startup in the '90s.

On the other hand, all through the dot-com bust I was employed. I dream that, with a few different choices, I could have been employee #10 at Yahoo. But in reality I could have easily ended up at Webvan. Or Pets.com. Still, I wonder what would have happened if I'd said "what if..." to myself during Adam's talk.

I regret not having lived in San Francisco when I was in my 20s.

On the other hand, had I lived in SF, I probably would not own my own home now (or, if I did, it would be a lot smaller, or I'd have a much bigger mortgage).

For a long time I regretted not coming out earlier than I did (23).

Now, I don't think it would have made any difference.

For a long time, I had a lot of regrets. Now, for most of them, I've come to one of two conclusions. For the first batch, I think I honestly did the best I could, and I've forgiven myself for not doing better. For the rest I've decided that, like coming out, it wouldn't have made any difference had I don't things differently, or things could have turned out much worse.

So I find myself not regretting a lot right now.

But I can also see that if I'm going to maintain this state, there are a few things that I need to address.

Soon.

But then, isn't that always the case?