It’s easy and popular to live by the idea of no regrets. To say that you regret nothing implies that every choice you have ever made was the exact best one and could never be improved upon. Or that you are going to ignore how it might have gone better.

It’s a nice goal.

But I have regrets. And I regret that I have regrets. I could dig a hole with this line of thinking but it would do nobody any good.

I disappeared for the past week into some sort of hole of darkness. I don’t know what happened but I blinked and days had passed where I went through the motions and did my job and didn’t work on my stuff. Autopilot can be a lifesaver but it doesn’t help you build anything better than what you have. It just helps maintain the basics. At least I woke up from autopilot after only a week instead of a month or years. What woke me up was thinking about regrets.

I made two comments on two different posts on IG. Both of them were “I wish…” I wish I could do that. I wish I could be there. Why can’t I?

How many times have I said those kind of things? I wish I had the time. I wish my schedule worked out better. I wish I could fit in to that social group. I wish I was bold enough or brave enough to do that or say that. I wish I could step out of my rut to make a change.

Every one of those statements disguises an excuse. Every one speaks of regret. When will I get tired enough of saying “I wish” to start saying “I will” and then actually follow through? Because I know that one day I am going to look back at now and wonder why I didn’t do the things that I wanted to do.

Even just this month I told someone that I only had one real regret. When I was in high school I had the choice between working the summer in the school library or going to my great aunt and uncle’s ranch to work. To this day I kick myself for choosing the library. I enjoyed the work, but I know that I would have gained so much more working on the ranch.

Now I have started to realize that I have more regrets than that. I will never regret that I have put so much of my time and energy into work to support my family but I do regret that I have not managed to find much time to work on myself. Now that the kids are mostly self sufficient it is time to put my energy into supporting myself and my own future.

I’m old enough to look back and see missed opportunities. I can learn from all of them. I am still young enough to make up for what I’ve missed.

Next year is 2020. For several years I have toyed with the idea of creating a personal project and calling it “Vision 2020.” I didn’t think it could happen, but the way my mindset has shifted…it just might be possible. I’m getting better at seeing what is most important to me. I’m getting better at seeing the possibilities that were always there. Now I want to get better at finding ways to bring those possibilities to life.

I need to think about it some more, but someday soon I will write out my vision for next year. It might not include goal dates for everything because next year will have a lot of real change and some things will depend on others to be able to happen, but I’m sure I can outline some priorities that can get multiple goals attached. We’ll see…

I’m off to kill some future regrets.