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Correcting a Life of Waste


I’ve spent my life wasting things.

Part of this is because I’ve always lacked the ability to focus on a single purpose. (Forgive me for the high school examples, but they are the easiest.) When I played football, I wanted to be playing basketball—so I quit football. When I was playing basketball, I was thinking about girls—so I was always distracted. When I was dating a girl, I was thinking about another girl—so I made a mess of a lot of relationships.

But I’ve always justified my decisions because they eventually work out well enough. After all, I watched my cousin get his femur snapped in half playing football a couple of years later, I was an All-State basketball player and our team made the state tournament, and I married a beautiful, intelligent, driven woman (who has helped me realize and correct my weaknesses, for which I am grateful). My decisions couldn’t have been too bad, right? However, now I wish that I would have never quit football, that I had actually given my all in basketball, and that I wouldn’t have been so selfish in all of my relationships, including friends and family.

This is why I will never understand people who say they have no regrets. You can say you live your life with no regrets, but I don’t believe it’s possible. Granted, you probably can bury your regrets with pride. But not recognizing or acknowledging your regrets isn’t the same as not having any.

I have thousands of regrets, and I would gladly go back and change all of them if I could.

Ironically, another part of my problem is that I spend most of my time in the past or the future (as I’m doing now), never the present. Most people struggle with the same thing, I think, but that isn’t an excuse. Maybe this is why people attempt to deny their regrets, so they won’t spend time dwelling on the past?

My most recent regrets are a little more complex than high school sports or meaningless relationships, but the problem remains the same: I am still wasting things, now more consciously than ever. I understand that I have wasted years of opportunity, talent, and potential, but I continue to struggle to change.

Thus, restarting this blog was supposed to be the first step in correcting my proclivity for waste, apathy, and procrastination. Now I plan to take another step. I’ve been imagining, planning, and working on numerous projects over the last year. Hopefully I can continue to correct 26 years of wasting things and have something to show you very soon, dear reader.


Comments

LauraLovesDogs said…
I totally agree with you. I would go back and change so many things if I could! For me, it's easier to acknowledge that I have regrets and that I've messed up over and over again, than it is to just ignore them and pretend they don't exist...I think when you do that, it creates a burden on your shoulders that you don't even realize is there.
November 4, 2012 at 1:00 PM

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