
Ask HN: What do you regret in life? - personlurking
I was reading this Ask HN (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=1879530) from about 6 years ago and wondered what HNers regret. Not necessarily your views on the concept of regret but actual examples from your life. I mainly regret not taking university seriously half a lifetime ago, but as a result I became a lifelong self-learner.<p>Suggested related reading on the topic:<p>&quot;In Praise of Missing Out: Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on the Paradoxical Value of Our Unlived Lives&quot;<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brainpickings.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;17&#x2F;missing-out-adam-phillips&#x2F;<p>___<p>In the Ask HN link above, a guy says he opened an unread email two years late and saw it was from Facebook in 2009 wanting to hire him.<p>Similarly, perhaps, one of my regrets was having received an early 2014 email that I didn&#x27;t open, from someone I didn&#x27;t much feel the need to keep in contact with. In late 2014, I finally read it. It was an offer to be the personal guide to the US team at the World Cup in Brazil...
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mstade
I don't regret a lot for long, I find it to be an incredibly depressing
feeling and I try to make short business of any regrets I do have. I've found
most of the time, actions (or inactions) that have lead to me regret can be
reversed by sincere apologies, shifting your stance, or otherwise try to undo
the thing causing you regret. In the case of inaction, if the train hasn't
left the station...

But there is one thing I can't shake.

I met a girl a little over a decade ago, and fell madly in love. We became a
couple, but due to various events our relationship ended. Not least because at
one point years ago, I was put on the spot and asked where our relationship
was headed, a thinly veiled attempt to get me to commit. I loved the girl –
still do – but I wasn't ready to settle down and marry. I wanted to focus on
my career and build a business and do all of these other things and I just
couldn't commit. Not long thereafter, our relationship ended and I relocated
to a different country.

It's cheesy and unoriginal, but it's the one thing I regret: not marrying that
woman.

Before anyone comments to that effect: I don't have a particularly hard time
dating, and have plenty of experience both before and after this woman. But
I've never connected with anyone like that before, and it genuinely feels as
though I've lost someone hugely important, like family. It's a very sad
feeling and cheesy as it may be, it's my only real regret.

~~~
ladytron
Why not take a vacation and go find her now?

Maybe she still feels the same way.

~~~
nstj
Quick phone call might be a little less stalkerish / cheaper on a risk
adjusted basis.

~~~
ak39
... add to that quick phone call some probing DD questions about her
suboptimal existing relationship, and you could find some profitable
arbritrage opportunities. :-)

------
MichaelGG
I regret being timid with doctors when my daughter had an issue. I knew
something was wrong but didn't want to be obnoxious and insist I knew more
than them. I let them delay important scans because it was late Sunday and
they convinced me it wasn't a big deal, that'd it be OK, nothing would happen
overnight. That was incorrect and she died two days later. It was a minor
issue that should have been caught, that I almost certainly would have
prevented just by insisting a bit, risking a bit of embarrassment of being a
pushy parent.

11 years later and this still destroys me any time it crosses my mind.

~~~
usgroup
I'm sorry to hear that Michael. So sorry to hear about your loss. Hindsight is
so difficult.

I've a similar medical experience and still think about it a lot. "I had it in
the back of my mind, why didn't I insist?". I know it is because the hindsight
gives me certainty that I did not have at the time but the impulse to regret
is sometimes overwhelming.

For what it's worth mate; hang in there.

~~~
MichaelGG
Because we're taught to revere doctors instead of seeing them as just another
professional that makes mistakes. I'm reminded of "the rabbit is running for
its life, the fox just for its lunch". Not to suggest doctors don't care, but
it's just a fact: they will make mistakes and they have to accept that in
order to work effectively.

------
pc86
Spending so much time on HN instead of doing things that will have an impact
(and I _don 't_ mean coding).

50 years from now nobody will care about code you wrote, neat charts you made
in Visio, or that you managed to get acquihired. Give your grandchildren
something to care about.

~~~
mhurron
"Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die." \-
Morty

Nothing you do, or statistically anyone does, matters after you move on
whether it's moving on from that job or moving on from this mortal coil.
Regret needs to be framed in the sense of did you regret what you did at that
moment for that moment.

Thinking about your accomplishments in the frame of years after your dead is
going to just depress you to the point you're going to consider making that
end come a whole lot sooner.

Give your grandchildren something to care about? Why would they? By the time
they come around, everything you've done is old news. Then your great-
grandchildren, well they won't know anything about you. Your great-great-
grandchildren won't even know you existed, just like everybody else on the
planet. Don't do things to try to create a legacy that no one cares about.

I regret plenty, but I also don't care that I'm a meaningless nothing in the
universe.

~~~
WillEngler
I find "What will your grandchildren think?" to be a decent heuristic. For
example, I admire my grandparents a great deal for their community service. My
grandmother is in poor health, but she still gets around for charity board
meetings. In her prime she was a pillar of civil society in my home town.
Thinking of what future generations will appreciate pushes us to think outside
of ourselves.

I know less about my great-grandparents, but I admire them for emigrating to
America and struggling to make a better life for their kids.

Granted, on the cosmic timeline their actions don't amount to too much
(because nobody's do). But I definitely feel the impact of my great and great-
great grandparent's decisions.

------
notacoward
Three things:

(1) Not retaining good exercise habits through my 30s and 40s. I did way
better than most, but still went through too many periods - sometimes over a
year - where I hardly exercised at all. It's really hard to pick it up again
when you're 50, but really important too. It hardly even matters what kind of
exercise you do (cue all the weightlifting bros jumping in to disagree) so
much as that you do _something_.

(2) Buying a house. What a pain. The purchase price is just the beginning.
Then you have to factor in property taxes and insurance and _constant_
maintenance that's both a cost and a huge time-suck. The financials would have
to be way more positive for it to be worth it, as far as I'm concerned.

(3) Getting involved in a project with crappy code and too many developers
constantly making it worse. Life's too short. Even if it's not as directly in
your area of interest, or not as outwardly successful, working on good code
with an upward quality trajectory is better for overall happiness.

~~~
sliverstorm
Constant maintenance? What is going wrong with your place? I don't think it's
supposed to be like that.

~~~
notacoward
Nothing's going on with my place that doesn't go on at every place more than a
few years old. Some day everyone's going to need a new roof or siding, new
furnace or water heater. They're going to deal with pests (mice, ants) and
fallen trees/limbs and drainage issues. Even when there's nothing wrong you
have to mow lawns, rake leaves, shovel snow, clean gutters, etc. - or pay even
more to have someone else do it. In our case the biggest single item was
damage from ice dams, just like half of my friends and neighbors. This is all
routine stuff, but it sucks up a lot of time and energy.

------
adamc
I regret not seeing clearly the effect that my depression was having on my
wife and kid, which will probably result in our divorce. Depression is
stressful to the bystanders -- don't think you can tough it out because it's
just you!

~~~
eswat
This is my one regret also, causing collateral damage to some very close
friends - rightfully not close friends anymore - while I went through
depression. Had to really rebuild myself from that point and still continuing
to do so.

------
J-dawg
I just scrolled down this thread and started reading a few of the different
regrets. One thing I realised is that a lot of them are contradictory with
each other.

e.g. Not marrying that girl vs. Rushing into marriage

Not working harder in school vs. Not playing more sport and socialising more

If you're the type of person who always thinks "what if?" then you're always
going to regret something. I'm starting to think that regretting is more a bad
habit than anything else.

There's always going to be _something_ to regret, if your mind works that way.

Disclaimer: I am somebody with a _lot_ of regrets and a bad habit of going
over and over things in my mind. A habit I am gradually getting rid of!

~~~
Balgair
Yeah, on that, it's called 'Rumination' if you are looking for the google key
word to research it more. I've done a bit of research on this, as I ruminate a
lot too and it has always affected my sleep. Does anyone have any good tips or
sources on how to stop excessive rumination and just fall asleep? The only
good things I have found are an exhausting amount of exercise or beer.

~~~
J-dawg
Yep, I learned about rumination from some therapy I had about a year ago.

I'm very far from being an expert so take what I say with a pinch of salt and
see a professional therapist, if you can afford it.

It sounds pointlessly glib, but the answer is to stop thinking. It felt very
unsatisfactory for me. I'm naturally a 'thinker' so there was a tendency to
think that if my problems are caused by thinking, they can also be solved by
thinking. I had to accept that this isn't true.

With practice you can begin to learn to gently redirect your thoughts to
something else. Don't rush it, you mind will naturally wander back to
rumination. But you can slowly get better at steering your thoughts away from
it. It's a skill, a muscle that needs to be exercised.

This is basically what mindfulness is all about, although I didn't have much
joy with the guided meditation exercises. I'm going to return to them and try
again at some point.

Also, there's nothing wrong with getting there through an exhausting amount of
exercise. It helps for me too!

For me, the rumination went hand-in-hand with being self critical. Being kind
to yourself is another skill that needs to be practised.

Hope this is helpful in some way.

------
StargazyPi
I started regretting not learning an instrument.

Then I realised this was dumb, bought a £20 Ukulele, signed up to classes, and
am happy as a clam.

4 months in, I play twice a week with a big group. I still sound awful solo,
but am amazed at how far I've come, and how much embracing something totally
different has enriched many parts of my life I just didn't expect.

~~~
Yhippa
I'm glad you found this. For me music is one one of the more intensely
personal things in my life--listening and playing.

------
Ntrails
I regret that I never made as much time as I could have for my dad when he was
around. Knowing how much simple texts calls and emails would have meant, my
consistent failure to respond promptly and contact regularly will always be a
regret. I hate the idea that he might have thought I didn't care, rather than
I am just lazy/thoughtless.

~~~
benmcnelly
I regret clicking on this thread on a Monday morning. But to echo what you
said, I wish I had hung out with my dad more when he was alive. Things happen,
spend time with your loved ones while you have them.

~~~
Declanomous
I'm really grateful to a cousin for pointing this out to me when I was 17 or
so. I was at a family wedding, and he asked me if I was going to dance with my
mother. Being the self-conscious teenager that I was, I told him I wasn't
planning on it. His response was, "Well, you know, she isn't going to be
around forever. One day you'll look back and wish you had more time with her."

I think it's important to become your own person, and you need to spend time
away from your parents to do that. But I make sure the time I spend with my
parents is quality time, and I don't waste it texting or whatever.

One thing I've heard is that the biggest regret most men have at the end of
their life is prioritizing work over time with their family. I constantly need
to remind myself of this, and I think it is something that other people on HN
need to remind themselves of as well. I notice that a lot of companies try to
play off the existential fear of being forgotten when we are gone by telling
us we are part of something bigger than ourselves. I think that expecting the
work you do at a company to create any sort of meaningful legacy is foolish.

------
laxentasken
I was careless with earplugs at a concert (not the whole concert, just the
time before the band hit the stage but it was quite loud music playing) and
that may have given me tinnitus, which sucks. So take care of yours ears!

~~~
jhayward
I have tinnitus and have only been to one concert and a few smaller shows in
my entire life. No headphone abuse, no firearms w/o hearing protection, no jet
engines.

It just happens. Don't beat yourself up about it.

------
arethuza
Only two thing I really regret:

\- The stress I must have caused my parents by being a complete arse from
about 17 to 21 or so. They had 4 kids with 2 of my siblings suffering from
disabilities. The last thing they needed was me adding to their stress levels.
Of course, I didn't realise this until after they were both dead and I was a
parent of a relatively well behaved teenager!

\- Bottling out of trying to join the Royal Marines - trained like crazy my
last two years at University but then was too terrified to actually apply in
case I wasn't good enough (which I probably wasn't!).

Edit: On a positive note apparently the first thing the young lady who went on
to become my wife of 26 years noticed when she first met me was my nice arm
muscles acquired from all that training! Also thinking about it going into the
forces might not have been the best for the stress levels of my parents!

~~~
stumblers
FWIW: I went for it and got into a pretty tough program (OCS US Marines), but
got 'boarded' 3 days before graduation. Brutal experience in many ways, but
I'm really glad I did it despite not making it to graduation.

My regret is not following through with a meeting/interview at the CIA a
couple years later. I don't remember all of the details, but in the end I was
afraid of the same outcome ('failing') so I cancelled it politely and moved
on; I shouldn't have and regret not even going.

~~~
arethuza
Have you read Bob Baer's "See No Evil" \- it goes into a lot of details about
his experiences being recruited and working in the CIA.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_(Baer_book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_\(Baer_book\))

~~~
stumblers
I have read that book (it's been a while but I remember it being a good read)
and would love to say something more substantial about my experience, but
frankly it simply came down to fear of failure and not wanting to blow it
(again).

This is somewhat top of mind because I just found the typewritten letter (this
was back in the early 90s) spelling out the process of getting to the
interview. With OCS the process was obviously way more explicit, but this was
a series of phone conversations that ended with that letter and plane tickets
at the airport on a certain day. I was newly married with a baby on the way
and chickened out.

While I definitely regret not following through, I really can't complain as
I've been very fortunate since.

------
bobochan
I regret that I took the easy way out studying math. When calculus was too
hard in high school I switched into a Pascal class, that I already knew,
because it was taught by the math department and gave me the same credit. I
suppose my real regret was that I let fear over grades dictate what I chose to
learn.

~~~
YPCrumble
I did the opposite. When I could have taken easy classes I took hard ones.
Sometimes I did poorly because I challenged myself so much academically. The
result was a mediocre GPA (~3.2). There are a lot of lost opportunities that
come with not gaming the system.

~~~
jackgolding
Similar happened, I felt really medicore by (attempting to) studying pure math
at one of the top institutes in the world to impress my parents and peers
instead of figuring out what truly would want to get me out of bed in the
morning.

~~~
Jasamba
Same, I was studying theoretical physics in switzerland, and getting paid in
gold compared to comparable programs around the world. Within 3 months of
starting, I couldnt make myself wake up in the morning, and fell into
depression. Leaving the phd, was the hardest decision of my life and give up
the wide eyed impressed reactions to the question 'what do you do'. But now
(few months later), working in Paris with days filled with novel experiences,
makes me glad I didnt hang on and regret it the rest of my life.

------
jgrahamc
I didn't start lifting weights until my 40s. I now realize how great strength
is in so many ways.

~~~
amelius
Could you elaborate, in what ways?

Also, I've noticed that people in the gym are somewhat narcissistic, so
perhaps the benefits are only for this group?

~~~
Normal_gaussian
I started climbing, people at the bouldering wall or at outdoor routes are
awesome.

Why is it so great? The control over your body. The feeling awesome and
powerful. It has made my life a whole lot less stressful as well, even though
I do more.

If you don't have some kind of total physical exertion in your life I highly
recommend getting one.

~~~
kzisme
This has always seemed like fun to me - is it hard to get started?

~~~
Normal_gaussian
Not at all.

To start, do three things.

Find a bouldering wall. Get a hold of some climbing shoes. Watch videos 5, 6,
7 of Climbing for Beginners [0].

Don't spend a lot on shoes, you will wreck them really quickly and you will
certainly buy the wrong sizing when you start.

Boulder a bit and have fun. I enjoy bouldering with a friend the most as it
really challenges me. Bouldering walls are often full of really cool and
helpful people.

If you like it then watch some more videos to improve technique, think about
what you are doing and practice. Consider trying rope climbing (you will want
to take a short intro course for this, the rope skills are _important_ ).

Then you will start watching super cool videos [1], find yourself at the wall
waay too often, and be more interested in finding out somebodies beta than
their name.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbIDnMmSLsc&index=5&list=PL-...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbIDnMmSLsc&index=5&list=PL-
tQqcPz8GJBOC5WurzR7D3F3B8Ag5wgc)

[1] [http://www.ukclimbing.com/videos/](http://www.ukclimbing.com/videos/)

------
chakalakasp
Not regularly exercising after I finished high school. You should definitely
do that. The time to start really exploring all the cool stuff your body is
capable of doing is before and during its peak, not as it slides down the
slope into the trough of old age. I find myself wondering how fast I could
have run a half marathon 20 years ago if I'd become a runner then, but I'll
never know.

I regret not beating out a fellow photographer for the cover of National
Geographic, but there isn't much I could do to change that one, it's just one
of those "damn, my best wasn't quite good enough" moments. But fortunately
photographic ability doesn't decline with age, though the relevance of the
medium might.

~~~
usgroup
If you spent your times running marathons in your 20s and 30s, you'd have a
good chance of being in for a total hip / knee replacements in your 40s.
Swings and roundabouts!

~~~
ASpring
Is this actually true? I always see it bandied about without data.

~~~
strongai
Again anecdotally, I have a keen running doctor friend in the UK who had 2 hip
replacements by the time he was 40. Now that he's in his mid 50s, he's looking
at replacements for his replacements.

------
matt101589
1\. Not taking care of my teeth when I was younger.

2\. This is probably more substantial: Not finding the right group of people
to surround myself with. This is a mixture of not putting in the effort and
not being in the right environment (particularly growing up and not really
having the choice).

Now I'm starting something to hopefully help me and others find and share
interests/passions with like-minded people. Life is too short to spend not
fully enjoying the things we do.

~~~
usgroup
Ah good old teeth. Not really engineered for the 21st century are they?
Nothing quite like the first few implants, maybe your first flipper, and some
force fed dental education to stoke the fires of regret :)

------
mabbo
I regret not taking any real risks. I joined the fortune-500 corporate
software world, never tried a start-up, never made anything memorable, never
broke new ground.

I regret letting myself get comfortable, to a place where the money is too
good to leave.

~~~
laurentdc
> I regret letting myself get comfortable, to a place where the money is too
> good to leave.

Getting comfortable is not necessarily bad. Knowing you have a solid
"fallback" option in case anything goes wrong can actually help creativity and
reduce the risk of having to compromise, imho.

~~~
kkoomi
It sounds like what he is saying is that it hasn't helped his creativity
though, and he's been compromising his creativity up until now..

~~~
mabbo
This, yes. And other things.

~~~
divbit
Sorry- my reply was a bit insensitive, probably just jealous of your situation
:)

------
jdc0589
honestly? Getting in to software development. I should have been a mechanic,
carpenter, machinist, or just sucked it up and spent more time really studying
math and gone the engineering/architecture route.

I've known my entire life that I needed to be making tangible physical stuff
to be really satisfied, yet somehow I have never made the leap because the
money is too good in technology land, and building software seemed like a
pretty good compromise. Now I'm bored with software engineering, transitioned
in to a corporate information security role to take a break, and feel like
I'll never get back to anything I like more cause the money is just too good.

Depressingly, I can see myself slowly moving up to middle/upper management
(it's already started a little bit) because once again the money is too good,
and falling in to the trap of telling myself "look how cheap you live compared
to your income, you can just retire by 50", which probably won't happen
anyway. Hell, even if it does, I'll be 50. Not the end of the world, but not
as good as doing what you enjoy through your 20s, 30s, and 40s.

tldr: first world problems. As much as people like to make fun of the
stereotypical "white guys are either in business or start a brewery" thing, I
get it.

~~~
Geekette
Consider combining the best of both worlds by launching a startup based on
products from your interest areas (selling them, connecting makers/collectors,
streamlining processes for related manufacturers, etc). You can start on the
side and quit work to focus fulltime if it grows. Lots of lucrative sub-
sectors in design-related physical goods.

You can also take a sabbatical/time off/holiday to refresh your mind, explore
ideas, tinker with related hobbies. If you stick to tech, consider taking
similar but shorter breaks regularly (e.g. 1-3x yearly).

~~~
jdc0589
thats not bad advice.

For the past year I've (intentionally) not done much/anything tech related for
side-projects just to give myself a real break. I've done some stuff on the
side, and even made a little cash at it, but its been in totally different
areas that I probably can't scale in to a full-time gig.

Maybe it's time to get back on the horse, in a bit of a different way.

------
tjic
Running my company for 15 years instead of for 10.

After the crash of 2008 it was clear that revenues were plunging and the
situation was dire.

I could have shut it down right then and there and left on a high note.

Instead I slashed my own pay and applied a Herculean effort to keep the firm
alive...only to shut it down anyway 5 years later.

That was five years of my life that I have nothing to show for.

Know when to walk away.

~~~
personlurking
The following quote comes to mind: “One of the hardest decisions you'll ever
face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.”

Equally valid for relationships, of course.

~~~
tjic
I blame myself for 90% of the bad decision, and Seth Godin and his "The Dip"
theory for the other 10%.

------
Unbeliever69
Things always appear to happen for a reason in my life. I postponed college to
work in an architects office, a job I got during high school. I developed some
software for the owner which we began to sell. The secretary embezzled from us
and I am let go.

Five years later the boss and I re-unite. At this time I'm going back to
college to study computer science. We plan on rebooting the company, but in
order to keep my day job I was forced to pursue my Master's Degree. So we part
ways again.

I go off and study at The University of Michigan, a school I would have never
gotten into had life not gone the way they did. I graduate with a degree in
Industrial Design and spend the next decade doing User Experience design. But
not very happily. At the age of 45 I have a yolo moment of enlightenment and
decide to go back to school to study Computer Science...again. I never really
stopped programming and I DID REGRET not pursuing this life-long passion.
School is...too easy and I'm not being pushed, so I quit and continued moving
forward learning on my own.

One day, I'm driving down the street and I spy the company logo of my former
boss on the side of a building, 20+ years since I left him. I walk in the door
and the first words out of his mouth was my name, with a question mark
attached to the end. I look at the empty desk beside him and think, "That is
my desk!" The next day we are business partners in a new venture. Apparently,
he had been working from home the last 25 years, doing very well for himself.
But the software that we set out to create back in 1988 has always been a
ghost that has haunted us both. So he left the comfort of his home, bought a
building, renovated it, hired and trained employees, for the SOLE PURPOSE OF
TRACKING ME DOWN SO WE COULD FINISH WHAT WE STARTED.

It is so easy to live life with regret. It is so easy to question our choices
and cry at our lack of good fortune. I've learned over the years that things
happen to me for a reason. All of the choices, both good and bad, brought me
to this moment. There were no accidents. I could easily look back at my life
and regret MANY things, but I don't.

And even if this new partnership goes awry, there will be a reason for this as
well.

~~~
DenisM
Well, that sounds like a movie script right there.

------
strongai
I regret choosing an elite university (Oxford) and its ultra-generic
Engineering course, rather than a more specific course in say, electronics or
even maths but at a less prestigious institution. I came out with a paper-thin
knowledge of a dozen engineering subdisciplines, rather than truly knowing any
one of them. Many of my peers became accountants, many others quickly became
'project managers' \- spreadsheet jockeys. I cannot think of any who actually
became engineers. Like others, this frustration has led me into a life of
continuous learning.

~~~
ryandrake
Funny, I regret going to a plain state-funded university and wish I would have
taken college applications more seriously to take a shot at a more prestigious
school. I think a lot of doors would have opened earlier for me had I done so.
Successful people get there because of their network and connections not
because of their knowledge and skills.

~~~
Grishnakh
If you're a regular on this site, prestigious schools are mostly bullshit.
They're not good places to go for an engineering degree, except MIT and
Caltech maybe (and even then they're really not the greatest places to go for
a BS).

If you're a politician or trying to become a corporate high-up, then yes, the
network and connections you make at the prestigious schools are extremely
useful. But someone who's a CEO or VP of a hedge fund or whatever is not going
to be a regular on this site.

If you want a career where you're valued for your knowledge and skills, good
state schools are the place to go. If you want a career where you're valued
for your network and connections, ivy league schools are the place to go.

------
wsc981
I regret spending time studying that I could have spent programming. I found
my study boring and in the end wasted a few years of my life and quite a bit
of money that I would have otherwise saved. I also believe I learned much more
in the workplace. And when I want to study a topic that is of interest to me,
I rather just buy a book.

I also regret spending around 7 years of my life without really sure which
path I would like to take. I lost direction and focus when my parents died
unexpectedly. In this period I was very depressed. I had to figure out my own
life goals, when my previous goal, making my parents proud, wasn't possible
anymore.

At least now I have some clear goals for my life and am generally a very happy
person :)

~~~
personlurking
> I also regret spending around 7 years of my life without really sure which
> path I would like to take.

Sorry for your loss. I've spent 15 years feeling the same. It's tough, but I'm
grateful to still have hope, mostly thanks to having a large amount of what
could be called non-professional interests. If not for discovering the endless
value of, and joy in, non-institutionalized learning, I'd have been a goner a
long time ago.

------
starcaller
I regret getting my first credit card, which ultimately led to my first
breakup after my first proper relationship. It also led to a bunch of personal
debt (a lot of which I've cleared, some I still have).

But if I hadn't, who knows how that would've affected later life - would I
have ever met my now wife? Or would I be living somewhere else and working
somewhere else? Would I have some of the cool stuff I have?

~~~
fastball
Your first credit card led to your first breakup? Was that really the only
factor?

------
echolima
Getting bounced out of the Air Force. I should have fought it, should have
held my ground and proved I was being set up. I had a witness willing to stand
behind me, but my 19 year old idiot of a self said fuck this. That was in
1983. I have a great life, but it still hits, that regret of walking away.

------
Taek
Grew up in the Chicago suburbs, then went to school in Troy, NY, then founded
a startup in Boston. Now I'm starting to feel like Switzerland is the next
destination, and while it feels like a more permanent move than the others, I
wonder where I would be if I had not moved at all.

I'd probably be a more stout Christian, my economic class would almost
certainly be lower. I'd probably have a lot more friends. Moving has a huge
social cost and I've paid it twice. I'd probably be happier in daily life.

But I'd also probably feel like a big fish in a small pond. Like I had let
down my potential. If I was in that position, I'd probably regret not leaving
for college more than I currently regret leaving.

So I don't actually regret the price I've paid. But I do reflect on it
frequently.

~~~
cableshaft
Plenty of non-devout or non-religious people in the Chicago suburbs area.
Unless you're talking about Wheaton. But even then, there's a few.

Personally I think internet forums had a greater effect on that for me than
relocating (I actually moved to the Chicago suburbs about ten years ago).

Definitely agree about the more friends, though. That's a big thing that's
making me reluctant to leave, is how many friends I've made here.

The job market here could be a lot better though. Most of the tech jobs are in
downtown Chicago, and even then it seems it's mostly in advertising, which I
loathe and would rather not work in.

------
auderwoof
Easily my biggest regret is that I didn't come out as gay until I was already
20 years old (in 1994), basically staying in the closet for 7 years.

~~~
exodust
The great Aussie Olympic swimmer Ian Thorpe didn't come out until around 32
years old, so you did okay compared to him!

~~~
Grishnakh
Not only that, there's a bunch of Republican politicians who still refuse to
admit they're gay, including that "wide stance" Craig guy who was caught in
the airport bathroom.

------
jps359
Taking the path of least resistance. 1) Applying to only one uni 2) Taking the
first job I was offered out of college

------
lordnacho
Hard to think of anything particularly bad, but my main regret is not speaking
up in favour of a more intellectually competent environment at my previous
startup fund.

I seemed to be the only person keeping an eye on developments in the wider
field, machine learning, coding, investment strategy, that kind of thing.

I was working with people who didn't even know what version control was, or
that we actually used it. Sloppy thinking that was mistakable for expediency
in the early days turned into pure intellectual laziness.

The same people had and still have a completely unrealistic view of what
they've built. No real understanding of markets, no real understanding of
coding, and no real understanding of how to run a business.

I've moved on now, but I feel there was more potential there, and it should
have been used to build a truly amazing investment firm. Instead I allowed my
colleagues to continue thinking they were excellent when they genuinely
weren't, robbing them and us of the chance to improve ourselves.

It's hard telling people they're not up to a task.

------
EugeneOZ
I regret I still can't get passport of civilized country because I left
university (and don't have degree now). As an immigrant, I have less rights
than refugee, despite I'm not going to get any social payments and take
workplaces (I'm a freelancer).

------
newdayrising
Not acknowledging my ADHD until I was 31. I'm 33 and finally understand why my
mind completely shuts down when I have multiple tasks, why I run from
challenges when pressed hard, why I failed classes multiple times despite
understanding the material, why I always thought of myself as lazy and why I
would have bouts of depression every time I tried my hardest at accomplishing
a task. I've wasted so many years in a state of wonder at other people's lives
- going on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and reading about the great things
people have accomplished, daydreaming that I wasn't a lazy bastard. It's also
affected my hobbies - reading, writing and playing guitar. I just can't focus
on anything for extended periods of time. My songs are disparate parts cobbled
together. My writing is a bunch of snippets. If I read I go crazy and can't
stop, if I start and get interrupted I never finish.

------
amirouche
Not doing more math. It seems like programming is very easy to learn whereas
math science is very difficult.

~~~
Insanity
It depends a lot on yourself. Math is really like a sport, I was doing it each
and every day as part of a Physics/Mathematics major. Whereas in the same
class that I was in, many people passed calculus, linear algebra etc, but
failed programming courses.

Programming might be easier to get into though

------
frenchman_in_ny
I regret spending years trying to make others (parents, siblings, others)
around me happy & conform to their ideals / wishes, instead of trying to make
myself happy.

I regret following their advice getting married to someone I already knew at
the time I didn't fully want to get married to, then having kids because
that's what everyone else felt was right for me. And I "regret" meeting other
people who I know would make me happier, but not knowing how to get out of my
present position, without making a ton of people (incl. little people) unhappy
in the process...

(and hopefully I'm not going to regret not having posted this under a
throwaway account)

------
rpazyaquian
Not having a passion or drive. I've pretty much floated my way through life,
and I'm still not happy with what I'm doing. I don't know why, but I'm
not...and I don't know what to do to fix it, or if it's even a real, actual
problem and I'm not just imagining it.

------
kyriakos
Working with the same company for nearly 10 years without a career path.
Thankfully its over now but I should have done it earlier.

------
leekh
Quitting jobs.

I've quitted jobs without letting my employer that I was unhappy or
disgruntled. In retrospect I should have let them know before I jumped ship;
mainly because the grass is rarely greener on the other side and some of them
could have changed.

~~~
ryandrake
I wouldn't regret that. Your career is your own responsibility and nobody
else's. It's unlikely your past employers would have tried to retain you if
you told them you were unhappy or disgruntled--at least I've never seen it
happen. I've found through many jobs: if you think leaving is the right
decision, it is.

------
6DM
Most things I regret I would later learn were for the best, for that is how I
met my wife. I like the area that I live in and can say things leading up to
this point were for the better.

There is only one true regret that I have. We weren't sure how the ceremony
should go when my grandpa passed. I didn't like that there was confusion about
what to do, the whole situation just wasn't going right. I didn't want us to
just sit there without any sort of progression.

In the most idiotic move of my entire life, I agree, with the guy managing the
place, that we should place the box and toss a little dirt on it. My grandma
picked up the box. As she approached the grave, somewhere in the back of my
mind I knew this was a bad idea. It was only about 3 steps away so I didn't
have much time to think it through.

When I saw her place that box in the grave... I mean she was just crushed. I
was about 22 at the time, so I should have known better. As a more mature
adult, I cringe thinking about it. Why on earth did I let her do that on her
own. I'll never know, but I will always regret that moment in both of our
lives.

------
retro64
A couple of years ago I was misdiagnosed with lung cancer. It was only a
preliminary diagnosis from an x-ray, but after several nodes were circled on
my chart with “malignancy suspected” written next to them, I thought I had
late stage cancer with weeks to live. What else could it be?

It turned out to be histoplasmosis shotgunned through my lung system, but for
about 3 weeks while I underwent further testing, I was preparing to die.

At the time I wished I would have spent more of my life giving to others. I
also wished I was more financially prepared; my kids, who would take care of
them? I would never see their weddings or even graduation. How would they go
to college? And for those of you reading this who really are in that
situation, my heart goes out to you. For me it was a nightmare I could wake
from, at least for now.

Anyway, after I found out it wasn’t terminal, my perspective on priorities
shifted in a major way. One thing in particular was focused on technology. I
sat back and realized what a stooge I’ve been over the years. As a developer,
one thing I always detested was chasing the latest tech, always trying to
decipher the tea leave to make sure I wasn’t out of work in 5 years when the
wind changed direction. Feeling not much more than a pawn to large tech
companies.

I realized I had so many unexplored areas that I wanted to research that were
slipping away, and would always slip away if I didn’t do something about it.

So I did. I now spend my free time diving into areas that _I_ find interesting
and have even reached back in time to finish a project that I dared not
before. Funny thing is, I’m still learning new things (some a complete waste
of time), yet I’m much happier doing it and I’m building a new world around me
while discovering new interests at the same time.

------
jccalhoun
I don't know that I "regret" anything. I do sometimes wonder what life would
have been like if I had made different choices but most of it is just "the
grass is always greener on the other side."

I wonder if I should have went into a different career path instead of
currently being an adjunct professor. If I would have went in a totally
different path I could be making more money now but I don't know if I would be
happier.

I wonder what would have happened if I had taken one high school teaching job
instead of the one I did take that I hated so much that I quit after one
semester. Of course I could have hated that job too and it would have required
moving so I would have been much worse off if I wanted to quit it.

I'm also 40+ and single, never married so of course I wonder what would have
happened if I had asked out woman X instead of being hung up on woman Y. But
then I could be divorced and a parent or something (I don't want kids).

So no real regrets. Things could always be worse on the other side!

~~~
Grishnakh
>I'm also 40+ and single, never married so of course I wonder what would have
happened if I had asked out woman X instead of being hung up on woman Y. But
then I could be divorced and a parent or something (I don't want kids).

You don't have to not want kids for this to be a big problem. Being divorced
with kids is a gigantic PITA, even if you love kids. I have a female friend
like this (I tried dating her but she didn't want to be anything more than
"just friends"); she really has NO free time. I'm not really sure why she even
bothers maintaining an OKC profile; it took me 3 months of exchanging dozens
of messages to get her to meet me for a coffee date! She couldn't even stay
long there because she had to get back to her parents to pick up her kid. (She
wrote back after the date and said we "weren't a match"; I have no idea why
and I really don't want to ask her).

Anyway, point is, if you're divorced with kids and have custody, you will have
NO free time for anything, including more dating, until the kids are at least
10 years old. That's a really big commitment, and a big risk considering the
divorce rates these days.

Worse yet, this woman's kid seems a little autistic and has some really odd
behavioral issues. Good luck getting a decent man to want to jump into that
situation...

It seems to me that maybe people should be required to take some kind of
classes to help identify good relationship partners when they're young,
because most of these cases seem to be the result of people picking absolutely
awful partners for relationships, and then popping out a kid or two before
they finally throw in the towel. This girl (well, woman, she's almost 40 now)
had all kinds of horror stories to tell about her sociopathic ex that she had
met in college.

Having kids is really a giant commitment and a gigantic risk. It's no wonder
educated and professional people aren't bothering with it very much; by the
time they get situated well enough in their careers, get their student loans
paid off and get financially stable, and then get through the dating process
and manage to find someone they really like and are confident they're a solid
long-term partner, they're too old biologically to have kids! All the people I
see having kids these days are in their early 20s, blue collar or military and
not college educated, and they're usually having kids out of wedlock, and not
even staying together after the kid is born. I honestly feel really sorry for
kids growing up these days.

------
just-let-go
I Regret:

1\. Accepting what was in front of me at the time, at the cost of my own
_deeper /real_ identity, and not just waiting it out. I should have believed
more strongly in my core values, including that belief that life is infinite
and this birth/lifetime is one amongst many and even if I don't find anyone to
share it with in a committed relationship, even then it is worth living and
can be shared with other humans in other ways.

2\. Associating certain laudable qualities with a minority religious-ethnic
group and then assuming all members of that group would have those qualities,
totally ignoring the fact that humans are complicated and diverse and
different shades of psychopath (even when its is no fault of theirs!).

3\. Assuming that my good behavior towards someone's family would be
reciprocated towards my family. I arrived at the following equation:

If you don't like A's (say, a man) behavior towards B (a woman), then if you
are (say) a _man_ , do NOT behave towards any _woman_ , as B (a woman) behaved
with A (a man). Otherwise, you are setting yourself up to be treated by the
woman as A (a man) treated B (a woman)! Why would you do this in the first
place, you ask? Perhaps, out of a sense of righting a social injustice,
perhaps thinking that feminism means that you (a man) has to make-up and pay
for your gender's injustice to the other gender by letting the historically
exploited gender get away with unfair and atrocious behavior (or specifically,
behavior far less equal to yours).

4\. Ignoring the big blazing (in retrospect), warning signs in people's
behavior and actions that I would (could/should) have heeded if were not
thinking with tunnel-vision.

Plenty of things I can go on and on about ....

BUT

Ask me what I _don 't_ regret? That's a list for another day (when I feel
gratitude!).

------
aepearson
I regret dedicating my life to sitting behind a computer building things that
don't exist and don't really matter to anyone - rather than making a real
difference to real people in the real world. I also regret that that endeavor
has severely limited my time spent with the people I love most, and exploring
the world.

~~~
UK-AL
What would class as a real difference?

------
erikb
Since I changed my view, also due to HN, I found there is little left to
regret. I mostly give the best I can in every aspect of my life. And when that
wasn't enough I will probably do better next time. If there is a risky
decision ahead I try to be aware of it and the details and use it as learning
experience. Living that way mostly gives every decision, every success and
every failure a meaning. And having meaning means there is not much reason to
regret it.

Btw: currently I'm without a job, about $15k in depth and will probably spend
the next 3 years paying off these debts without any holiday or much
improvement of life quality. Yet it was only painful for a few weeks and I was
able to move on. And who knows, the next role of dice may end up giving me
unexpected luck and next year looks very different already.

------
intellegacy
I regret listening to naysayers in my 20s. Whatever your dream or ambition may
be, there will be people telling you that you will fail when they have no idea
whether you will or not. They just want to stop you from trying it seems.

I wish I could have powered through instead of taking their "advice" to heart.

------
arcanus
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest
loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it,
you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not
throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered
him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [Nietzsche,
The Gay Science, §341]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return)

We all make mistakes, but I am happy with my decisions in life. Even the
setbacks were valuable learning experiences, and often were good experiences.

~~~
restalis
_" Even the setbacks were valuable learning experiences, and often were good
experiences."_

Unless these said setbacks have permanent, unassailable bad consequences that
you have to live with. Add here "that others have to live with" which is worse
by any normal socio-empathetic judgment. It's good to be optimistic, but there
is larger set of contexts you should be aware of.

~~~
arcanus
I don't disagree,but I'll also caution that you don't know me, and I think it
is fair to say I've had some objectively horrible things happen to myself and
those I love.

But years later, I do believe that negative experiences are part of the human
condition. One certainly should not seek them out, but stoicly accepting both
the good and the bad is part of being a mortal.

------
yodsanklai
Some of my regrets. \- not brushing my teeth when I was a kid (not really my
fault though). I'm paying the price now \- I was very good at maths when I was
an undergraduate. I had to choose between applied maths and CS. I chose CS but
I think it gave me lesser career opportunities. And it's easier to learn CS on
the side as a hobby (it's constantly evolving so you have to do it anyway). \-
I didn't pick the right PhD topic. It seemed cool at the time, but it was a
niche field with little practical application. \- I should have done my MS
abroad (but I was afraid that my English wasn't good enough, among other
things).

Overall, I didn't really know what was possible at the time. I was only
looking at step "N+1" and missing the big picture.

------
enobrev
I'd hate to change my past as I'm very happy with my present and would never
want to jeopardize it. Likewise, a lot of "mistakes" have been excellent
learning experiences for me, which makes them hard to regret.

That said, my biggest regrets have mainly to do with staying in relationships
longer than I should have. I'd done this twice, and both times I walked away
drained and depressed. The women were wonderful in their own ways, but we just
plain didn't work and I shouldn't have tried to force it, and definitely not
for as long as I had.

Now, though, I'm happily married with someone I'm excited to spend every day
with, and I assume I learned quite a bit from those relationships to be able
to enjoy and appreciate this one.

~~~
personlurking
Ouch! Been there myself, staying in some relationships longer than I should
have and leaving drained. To counter that, I've said "no" to the last 4-5
single women who have entered my life because I don't want to try something
(relationship) just to try it, and more importantly they just didn't feel like
the right match for me. Old me would have said yes to a few of them, but I'm
more patient with myself now.

Good to know the happy ending, though. Congrats!

------
bshimmin
Not maintaining friendships.

I'm sociable and confident and I have never found it hard to make friends, in
almost any context. When it comes to actually maintaining those friendships, I
am simply awful at it - it often takes me months to reply to messages, and
when I do, the platitudinous "We must meet up soon" never even translates to
so much as my glancing at a calendar to work out when that "soon" might be.

I sometimes wonder if I would be better at maintaining friendships if
initially making them didn't come to me so easily, _or_ whether the kind of
people I find it so easy to make friends with are, in fact, simply also people
just like me (ie. they are awful at maintaining friendships too). Both seem
quite plausible.

~~~
vthallam
Guess I'm not alone who isn't good at this. But i now have realized that you
have to very few set of close friends than like 20 acquaintances(i know it
sounds obvious) and i never miss an opportunity to meet them no matter how
busy i'm with the work.

~~~
bshimmin
Yes. I think having two or three very close friends whom you see often is
vastly preferable to having fifteen or twenty friends you rarely see (the "see
often" bit is probably the biggest challenge, especially once you have
children).

Conversely, I have found in business that having an endless stream of
acquaintances with whom you are on vaguely friendly terms is _extremely_
beneficial.

------
nailer
Not dancing earlier. I was a better dancer than my sisters and used to go
watch them do ballet, but my mum wouldn't let me because I was a boy.
Currently doing a bunch of jazz and commercial a few days a week in between
running a company and other gym activities.

~~~
test1235
My wife is really into her dancing, and before I met her, I never cared for
the likes of anything I considered 'girly'.

People really need to hear the story of Billy Elliot (my favourite musical -
another thing I would never have bothered with, previously) and the life of
Carlos Acosta (who I was watching on Parkinson just last night).

Good luck with your dancing, and don't let others put you off.

------
mikelevins
Speaking up when I should have kept my mouth shut.

Keeping my mouth shut when I should have spoken up.

Giving in to the wrong impulses.

Failing to act on the right impulses.

Missed opportunities to be kind or helpful or compassionate.

Hurting people.

------
pritambaral
\- Not completing my Bachelor's, even if it wasn't a field remotely useful for
computer science

\- Not going in for professional help with my depression. I thought I could
fix it myself, that I should be able to fix it myself, and thus I prolonged it
by years. By the time a dear friend sensibly convinced me to go, I thought I
had fixed it, but I had constant nightmares, couldn't sleep longer than a few
minutes, and had thoroughly misdiagnosed the cause of my depression that would
have guaranteed its lifelong power over me.

And then after therapy, after I got well, and fell again. And I didn't go. I
regret not seeking help.

------
artmageddon
Personal regrets:

* Fighting with my parents when I was younger by refusing to learn to speak Polish(felt like it was too much homework and for little gain)

* Not recognizing earlier that my mother wasn't going to live past 42 with stage III / IV colon cancer(granted, I was 16 / 17 and I was kept in the dark)

Career regrets:

* Not trying harder in school. I feel like I should be doing a lot better in life than I am.

Not regrets / silver linings:

* Because of the above though, I learned to appreciate how little time we really have in life, and to really appreciate and love those whom we have in our lives, along with appreciating the value of learning, too.

------
WheelsAndBlade
Easy! To have invested too much time in Computer Science.

A bit of context: I'm born physically disabled, my parents fight to make me
follow a 'normal' education. When I was 9 I realized that if one day I wanted
to have a normal life I should be good at something. Since I was already
spending 12 hours a day on my computer (to take my school lessons and to play
with my friends) I decided to become a developper. 15 years later I'm triply
graduated in computer science, I know a lot of things in nearly all major
fields of CS and I have a good position in an important digital security
company. I'm recognized by my peers and valuated by my hierarchy. I
intensively tried to date for two years. First regular women, but I was
massively rejected for obvious reasons. Then, disabled women, but I just can't
because there's a too big educational/societal gap. I don't regret all the
feelings I had doing CS stuff, even if it was just the illusion of pleasure to
learn and master stuff. I only regret to, at one point, have confused my goal
and how to reach it. Everything has a price, I was sure I was able to pay it,
but now, I know I wasn't able to.

If I had to do a thing differently, I would leave 'normal' school when I was
9, my life would have been a lot easier.

I'm far happier now, I only do things that give me an immediate rewards and
I'm here for my friends who have been patient enough to wait for me all these
years.

------
ap22213
Sex: I regret not having a lot more intimacy and sex during my twenties.

Friendships: I regret not keeping closer ties with my old high school friends.
Since then, we've taken very different paths, but I still feel like they're
the only ones who ever 'got' me.

Fear: I regret allowing social anxiety and shyness to prevent me from
connecting with many interesting people that I've met over the years.

Embarrassment: I regret spending my life trying to be 'productive' and
'socially acceptable' rather than following my heart.

------
CM30
Well, I regret two things. One personal, one slightly less so.

On the personal side, I regret not meeting more people and focusing more on
networking at university. Indeed, back when I was studying for my degree, I
pretty much did nothing at university other than study the subject and go
home.

Unfortunately, I seem to have found out later that university now (compared to
the outdated ideas your parents have about it) is more about meeting people
who can help you out later in life than it is about getting a piece of paper
called a degree.

I feel that if I had known that, I could have potentially got better jobs
afterwards (by knowing someone with connections in a larger or more successful
company) or found a team to help with founding a startup, website or other
venture.

I also regret (as presumably do a lot of other people) not learning to
code/program earlier. Because like learning a language, it seems like learning
to program is easier at a younger age, when your brain is more flexible.

Either way, because I didn't (beyond HTML, CSS and Javascript), it meant I had
to learn an awful lot when I started working as a web developer, and hence
found it quite difficult to grasp even some of the simpler aspects of
programming (like basic foreach and switch statements).

So yeah, those are my regrets in life. Not learning to code while young and
treating university as if the degree mattered more than the networking and
connections.

------
mathattack
It's very hard to second guess things in life - if you're happy with how
things have worked out in general, it's near impossible to say what
contributed and what hurt.

But....

1 - I was quite a jerk in some relationships when I was in college and soon
thereafter. I didn't need to be.

2 - I regret not forcing my way overseas earlier in life.

3 - I regret not paying attention to subjects outside of Computer Science
earlier in life.

4 - I regret not achieving wealth soon enough in life to take care of my
parents better.

~~~
restalis
I was quite a jerk in the teenage years and regretted that too until not long
ago. I come to convince myself that turning into a jerk was only an adapting
reaction to fend off abusive people. From what I've noticed in the pool of
abuse-avoiders friends, the ones having enough social skills maybe managed to
deal with it gracefully enough, but for the others (me included) being a plain
jerk was the simplest working solution. If you still beat yourself over it it
may be because you just forget the problems and limitations you had back then.

~~~
mathattack
In my case it was more around dating. It was more about being immature on my
part than any issues on anyone else's. (If it was being defensive, that's more
conscionable than being a jerk who didn't think enough about others)

------
k__
I mostly regret not starting sooner with something.

Lifting weights, playing guitar/bass, programming, polyamory, remote working,
saving money, studying for school.

~~~
mherrmann
Could you expand on the polyamory part? Are you in a polyamorous relationship?

~~~
fastball
Seems pretty self-explanatory.

In most places in the world, we are raised to pursue monogamous relationships,
whether that is predicated on the idea of "true love", or just the need to
"settle down and start a family". Either way - monogamy.

In reality, a lot of people aren't happy with monogamy. See the extreme
prevalence of cheating/divorce. I'm not OP, but I think the world would be a
much happier place if everyone stopped trying to be so monogamous all the
time.

If someone prefers monogamy, they can find someone that also prefers monogamy.
But society in general shouldn't be trying to dictate that.

~~~
Grishnakh
I agree completely, however there are practical problems to being polyamorous,
namely in finding partners. This is a common complaint if you read poly
discussion forums: couples decide to open their relationship, and pretty soon
the woman is banging men left and right, while the man can't even find a
single new partner.

I'm over 40 now, and somewhat recently divorced so I've been on the dating
market for a couple of years or so. I explored poly a bit while still married
(wife didn't mind, we got divorced for other reasons), but it didn't go
farther than a few coffee-dates. Now that I've been single, I've had to drop
the poly stuff altogether if I want to get a date at all; there simply are not
any poly-accepting women in the major east coast city I live in, in this age
range. Perhaps it's a little better on the west coast. I do see couples in
open marriages more and more on Tinder and OKC, but it's still puny, plus most
poly women I see online are eclectic in the extreme (and thus would not be
interested in me, or vice versa).

Poly seems like a pretty good relationship choice if you're under 30, because
that crowd is so much more accepting of alternative lifestyles. If you're over
40, I think you might as well just resign yourself to monogamy and
cheating/divorce. Probably best to avoid marriage if you can, just hop from
relationship to relationship.

------
hdkmraf
Wasting 3 years of my life doing a PhD

~~~
Cyph0n
I'm just starting one that will take at least 4.5 years, but I'm coming in
with a BSc. May I ask why you ended up regretting it?

------
smrtinsert
I regret not structuring my life earlier. There is no way to accomplish
something being carefree. It requires planning and dedication.

------
projectileboy
I very much regret not working hard in school in order to spend the rest of my
life doing something more intellectually stimulating. I also regret not
reading more in my 20s and 30s.

I very much do not regret getting married and having kids, and I also do not
regret consistently prioritizing my family over the artificial daily panics of
software development projects.

------
emodendroket
I regret totally blowing off studying math after my junior year of high school
and never studying CS at all in school. I've filled in a lot of the gaps but
it would have been easier then.

But then again, it's hard to say, isn't it? My life would have turned out
differently if I hadn't made the choices I have and overall I'm pretty happy.

------
shade23
I was studying my electrical engineering and as all the other Engineering
students,I was searching for internships then.My interest was mainly in
Electromagnetism and Field theory. I was really hoping for an internship at
CERN[1]. I had applied for the same and did not get through.I then kept asking
the professors there and tried selling myself quite a bit. I finally got one
of them to accept me .However the required fee was atleast 4x what I could
afford.As a result I could not go there. Considering the quality of education
in Indian colleges and the lack of credible practical experience,I had to
forgo those dreams in the field and take up some typical consultancy (like TCS
but not TCS) job. This was the first time I had taken up programming(I refused
to take it earlier because i considered the field over saturated and highly
ephemeral(Boy o boy I was wrong )) .I enjoyed software development .I enjoyed
the complete open nature of it and the speed and how helpful people were on
the online community (compare stackoverflow and Electrical Engineering SE[2])
. I realised that I loved this work and I was glad that this happened.

My point is this : We are no different from really capable Branch Prediction
engines [3]. Every regret stems from an If. We learn along the way.I
personally keep a list of all the things I regret which I always go through
before making the next important decision in my life .

I also regret not doing my Masters immediately after my graduation.I hope to
do that soon too.

[1]:[https://jobs.web.cern.ch/join-us/short-term-internship-
progr...](https://jobs.web.cern.ch/join-us/short-term-internship-programme)
[2]:[http://electronics.stackexchange.com/](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/)
[3]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340348)

------
schmrz
> I mainly regret not taking university seriously half a lifetime ago, but as
> a result I became a lifelong self-learner.

Can you please expand on this? Why do you regret that?

I've read a great book about this topic: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.
It's a bit more general of course, but it might be interesting to you or
others.

~~~
personlurking
Well, I'm hoping that even if I went to uni that I would have still become a
lifelong learner because I'm naturally curious and a bit cynical. Believing
that I would have come to the same conclusion in life, having a uni degree in
my back pocket would have made me feel a lot better about myself all through
my 20s and some of my 30s. Like when applying for jobs in a specific field
instead of taking service jobs, growing my professional abilities in said
field, having a regular paycheck.

Thanks for the recommendation!

------
restalis
I regret being hard headed in a lot of my decisions. About accepting more
mentorship, more critique, more guided challenge, and more help in general,
especially when these weren't that expensive in terms of commitment and moral
debt. This might be hypocrite because I'm enjoying the various forms of my
current frugally retained freedom (and kind of still look down on those with
various burdens who acted reckless by my standards back then).

I also regret not taking better care of my health. Although I consider myself
a fairly responsible individual in this regard and went to great lengths to
avoid health issues on many aspects, I haven't managed to be careful enough
and cover the entire ground here. Health issues are costly in a lot of ways,
the extra care requirement being the worst for me.

------
ryandrake
I regret going back to school mid-career. The amount of money I spent on that,
plus the amount I could have been making in industry, both compounded over
time, is easily more than the return on going back to school. You really need
to shift to a career track with a steeper compensation curve afterwards to
make it worthwhile financially. If you graduate and go back to your previous
"salary + cost of living increases every year" trajectory, you wasted your
money and time.

On the other hand, education is worthwhile for its own sake, but that's only
one part of the equation. If you're thinking about going back to school, do
the math and probabilities first to ensure it will be worth it.

------
gtmitchell
I regret deciding to major in a hard science instead of programming, as well
as spending far too long in a PhD program before dropping out.

The personal and professional toll of these choices has been painful on the
best days, soul-crushing on the worst.

------
arvinsim
Why oh why didn't I take Math/Physics seriously...

But the ones that I regret the most are those were I didn't say how I truly
felt to the people that matter that most.

They are the ones, not the rejections or the failures, that gnaws on your
soul.

------
splittingTimes
Around 30 I started with surfing and dancing LindyHop. I should have done that
10 years earlier. Cannot stress enough how much more both activities added to
my overall "outer" experience of life. The vibe, the people you meet and the
places you go to are amazing. The social experience of these communities alone
is such a positive influence.

The other aspect is more of an "inner" experience. Somehow in dancing and
surfing, the connection of your body with your mind through music/nature of
waves is, for a lack of a better term, opening up a new world.

------
Elvewyn
Leaving strings class (or orchestra, whatever you wanna call it) after just 2
years. I was pretty good at it, but hated practicing as a teen.

A decade later and I wish I could play an instrument, still.

~~~
dasboth
Came here to post a similar story. Played the piano for many years, hated
practising and performing at recitals, eventually stopped complaining it was
too much effort. Now I wish I had a solid foundation to build on as I've
stared playing again. All that music theory and practising of scales would be
really useful now.

Having said that, it's never too late to pick it up again!

------
kitd
I used to regret not finishing my degree, but I'm past that now.

I don't have many regrets but one that sticks out is not taking a team leading
position when I was about 30. I am now over 50, happily working in a coding
env, but I have no real experience of leadership which I feel is an element
sorely missing from my professional experience.

But even that is minor. I feel very glad that I don't have the personal
regrets that I've seen many others suffer. They are the most potentially
damaging I believe.

------
marknutter
I regret leaving my freelancing career 3 years ago to become a full-time
employee. I made the decision out of fear because I had increased my standard
of living and was afraid of not continuing to make enough money as a
contractor to pay for it. My life has gone downhill ever since. Today however,
I put in my two-week notice. I realize how unfounded my fears were and for the
first time in a long time I finally feel like I'm in control of my life again.

------
drewbug01
It's taken me a long time to get to this point - but I regret going into this
industry (I'm an SRE/backend engineer person).

I've found other passions on my journey so far, and I wish I could pursue them
full-time. I'm trying. But frankly, it's hard to give up the money if I want
to live in a big city and be able to adopt kids and be able to retire
comfortably and not freak out when I inevitably have large medical expenses.

It's somewhat depressing.

------
Starwatcher2001
Not coming out as transgender through fear about what other people might
think.

Getting involved with religion.

Sticking with comfortable old technologies for too long (VB6) before moving
on.

Not cracking procrastination.

------
tehlike
For me it's starting real life with my first job at age 24 and not before. My
parents were typical protective parents - they didn't let me struggle and
achieve something on my own. Graduated with honors and went to MIT and so on -
but i feel like I am still missing essential skills that would make me reach
where I want, and the feeling that I didn't achieve much so far is keeping me
awake every night for the past 3 years.

------
brookside
Never finishing songs I was writing while in the perfect position to pitch
them to pop artists I was working with.

I switched to coding purely for monetary/pragmatic reasons. I'm doing ok
professionally now, but feels like a sad half-existence. (Lot of other
opportunities with things I cared about personally I squandered too.)

 _And you wonder why your father was so resigned. Now you don 't wonder any
more._ \- Ben Folds Lyric that comes to mind

------
dagurp
Not socializing enough in college

------
michalstanko
I regret my constant procrastination.

I regret not getting the best domain names in my country while they were still
available back in 1998, which would now provide for a comfortable life.

I regret not being able to persuade my wife to move somewhere to Spanish coast
- like Valencia or Alicante. I hate winters so much.

I regret having so many regrets and insecurities and unanswered what-ifs in my
head, not being just happy and awesome at all times instead.

------
afarrell
Not getting enough sleep while I was in university.

------
lprubin
I wish I had spent 10% of the time I used playing computer/video games in high
school/college on learning to code instead.

~~~
golanggeek
Ah, I wish the same too.. spent so much time watching movies...

------
nish1500
Not trying to get out sooner. Moving to a different country, and building a
life there is a long, arduous, and lonely process, and I'm not even remotely
close.

I'm 24 already, and I regret having to spend the best years of my life looking
for a home, when people my age are making friends, finding relationships, and
building memories.

I regret not having the same starting point.

~~~
gunnihinn
I wouldn't worry about it. 24 is still very young, and many people never make
that move. I'm moving to another country for the third time in ten years in a
few hours. You'll make friends, build relationships and have a home.

------
zodPod
I was literally just thinking about this. I regret not working harder in
school and not taking it more seriously. I was just trying to get through it.
Now, as an adult, there's a lot of schooling I wish that I had taken advantage
of when I was younger instead of desiring to now as someone struggling to pay
all their bills.

------
facepalm
Not enough sex when I was still young enough.

~~~
AznHisoka
because youre too told to enoy it now or because you are in a monogamous
relationship now?

~~~
facepalm
Married

~~~
Grishnakh
You need to ask your wife for an open marriage. Monogamous relationships are
morally wrong IMO.

~~~
facepalm
While I also think that humans are probably not built for monogamy, I'm not
sure if it would really help much. We also have small children, so there is
not much time to meet other people. And there is the issue of physical
attractiveness. I am attracted to some women of my age, but more often to
younger women. I shudder at the thought of what they might think of me (leery
old guy...).

~~~
trprog
Serious suggestion. Assuming it is legal wherever you are consider periodic
visits to a brothel. Attractive young ladies (or gentleman) whose job is
providing convenient sex to people they probably wouldn't otherwise have sex
with.

I have heard of couple's coming to an arrangement where the husband (it always
seems to be the husband) goes once a month.

Similarly I have met divorced men who opt for brothels in place of pursuing
other relationships. This decision typically seems to come after an expensive
divorce when they do the math and realize that it may be cheaper to have sex
with a parade of paid professionals Vs getting into another serious
relationship and losing half their stuff again.

~~~
facepalm
I am not morally opposed to brothels, but it doesn't appeal to me personally.
Not yet, anyway - maybe the more older and disgusting I get, the more I will
consider the option out of desperation (I hope not).

------
pknerd
Not kind of regret but yeah painful: I have been earning by writing software
for more than a decade yet I never considered myself a professional
programmer. I kept thinking I am some guy that fits well for RnD and Analysis
kind of work thus did not dig deep in programming and polished which I am
doing now, after a decade.

------
NumberCruncher
I try to not regret anything in a stoic way and I am quite good at it lately.
It is just a waste of time because the past can not be changed.The only thing
we can do is learning from our past experiences.

@ OP: If the fate had wanted to work that guy at FB so had he opened that
email "by accident".

------
baldfat
No regrets BUT I think I should have studied Engineering and enjoyed it more.

I love my family and my kids. I would have hated to not be there for three
kids that became my family. I wouldn't have adopted these kids if I didn't
live here and no way that would have happened if I was an engineer.

------
strictnein
I was going to go to CalPoly for CompSci, but instead went to a local school
for emotional/relationship reasons. I ended up staying together and marrying
my girlfriend (and now we're 13 years in with two kids), so it's hard to
really weigh the options against each other.

------
jkereako
Not trying at all in high school. I barely scraped by with 2.00 GPA and ended
up at a public university that was gracious enough to accept me. I often
wonder that if I had gotten better marks where I would have ended up.

I also regret not learning to program as a kid. I put that off until college.

------
tmaly
That I did not start working on something that has the potential to have a
bigger impact on the world.

------
dorfsmay
Caring too much. Caring for the tedious details, small and big, that I know
are important.

This means that regardless of my job description and intentions, I always end
up being a sysadmin, spending my life caring for the tedious details that are
too boring for the cool kids.

------
anexprogrammer
Not discovering I had ADHD until 40s, which leads me to

Realising ADHD's part in wrecking a great relationship years ago.

Not launching my last startup 1 year earlier (We'd have probably survived the
recession). Also having to let people go - I found that as tough as losing a
job!

~~~
reneherse
I struggle with what I sometimes think is ADHD, but I haven't pursued a
diagnosis or treatment. How did you discover you had it?

~~~
anexprogrammer
I spent a lot of my younger years thinking I was forgetful, etc. Ended up with
not bad systems to manage - but by chance.

By chance saw a tv programme 9 or 10 years back about kids with ADHD and
suddenly understood exactly. I also realised just how crap the media and
popular view of it is. Found out that there were an awful lot of other habits
and symptoms that can be a part of it and could mentally check off quite a
few. Suddenly I wasn't confused about why I did a lot of the things I did, all
the way back to early years.

Internet research would probably have had me give up if I hadn't seen the
documentary. Half of what I found was "ADHD doesn't exist" or made up junk to
sell a book, or a diet or "amphetamines are terrible" as it was the height of
the media theme of too many diagnosed or conspiracy to sell Ritalin. Got past
that to medical and quality resourses and discover the different degrees of
ADHD or even that there's several forms and you don't even have to be
hyperactive and bouncing off walls.

Started to understand where my habits failed and why. Started to understand
why I couldn't fix a few things most people find laughably easy.

Pushed for diagnosis (took a while), got medication, realised they're not a
miracle reprogramming cure. They fix many of the faults in the brain, but
don't cure all the bad habits you developed. Been working on better habits
since.

Wish I'd had medication and awareness through education, though I got OK
results by the luck of being bright. My 20s would have been easier before I
started to figure out decent systems to work around my weird. :)

Edit: Sorry didn't realise I'd written that much!

~~~
reneherse
Thanks for all you wrote! I suspect I'm in a similar place to where you were
prior to getting treatment. I've resisted pursuing a diagnosis because it's
hard to see what an alternative "normal" would be like. Whether creativity
would suffer.

I'd be interested in talking further; If you wouldn't mind answering a few
more questions through email, please send me a message at the address in my
profile. Thanks again.

------
grondilu
Playing Basketball for several years despite having no talent whatsoever. With
hindsight it was a complete waste of time.

That's probably not the most important regret in my life but it's a clear one,
and one that I can confess without being too personal.

------
dorfsmay
Not doing.

I have done a lot of mistakes in my life, including being bankrupt, but I
learned from most of them. It's the stuff I thought of doing and didn't do
that I regret. All those "what if..." now, that I'll never know the answers.

------
mhomde
Not making more mistakes sooner

------
jhgjklj
I regret not being disciplined in the college and if i would have mastered my
courses in college i could easily understand machine learning now and not have
to study statics and calculus now.

------
du_bing
I think there is not anything I really regret now, maybe I am not old enough.
Maybe I should have left my ex-girlfriend ealier, because values differ
greatly, it's hard to communicate.

------
XaYdEk
To go with Lemmy "Regrets are always late and usually pointless" and to go
with Frank "... I have a few, but then again too few to mention", except 1.
not marrying her.

------
walshemj
Back in 94 when the web was new not making more use of the v senior guy in BT
who I worked with on some early web projects (he was eqvielent to ceo of a FSE
250 company) as a mentor.

------
jey
> I mainly regret not taking university seriously half a lifetime ago, but as
> a result I became a lifelong self-learner.

Then why do you regret it?

------
Delmania
Rushing into marriage and not taking more chances with my career. Both I
Attribute to depression.

------
samblr
Good books maketh good humans - I wish I had read few good books in my early
20's.

------
AnimalMuppet
Being too preoccupied with things I wanted to do when my kids were younger.

------
Frias
I regret to have regretted too much. Especially the ones i tried to fix.

------
Avshalom
Depending on how you count it: between 5-8-12 years lost to depression.

------
module0000
I regret joining the Army instead of the Coast Guard. A lot.

~~~
gaius
Curious, why?

~~~
module0000
I was the perfect 18 year old target for the recruiters message of "do manly
things, be all you can be, army of one, etc...". My job in there was "signal
intelligence analyst"(98c), which sounds fine and good, and you might
imagine(as I did) that it would lead to a civilian career in the same sector.
Nothing was farther from the truth in my experience. The private sector
regards "Army intelligence" as an oxymoron/joke, and my only options were a
job with the DOD or other government agency.

If I had picked any other branch of service(except the Marines), I wouldn't
have had that problem. I also might have found my comrades to be less brawn
and more brain if I had joined a branch that was less focused on the combat
aspects of war.

Hindsight is 20/20 though, ya know?

------
rhodrid
Ever starting smoking.

------
throwaway29292
Not knowing how to make people laugh at the right moments.

------
FLUX-YOU
Not learning how to talk to women romantically

------
carsongross
Not having kids earlier, and more of them.

~~~
swipecity
why is that ? I'm 26 soon 27, I don't have a girlfriend (not looking for one
currently), and I'm wondering what would be the ideal age ?

~~~
Scottn1
I can answer this because I too wish I could have had my son sooner. I was
scared to death of having kids for all through my 20's and early 30's. I now
realize I was just selfish and didn't want the "burden" for lack of a better
word, of something that doesn't go away. I now realize how wrong I was.

My wife of 10 years convinced me finally to have a kid when I was 33. I
risked, at that point, a failed marriage if not giving her at least one. We
agreed to just one kid. Had I'd known how hard it was going to be for us to
just conceive of one, I would have agreed to start trying much sooner. It took
us 5 years of trying the old fashioned way as well as some basic medical help
until we finally agreed to pay the price of a new small car for IVF. The
stress it caused my wife for five years of trying was hard to watch. She'd
tear up seeing a teenager carrying two kids but we couldn't have one.

My life changed the day my son was born (who is now 6) and I can't put into
words how much joy he has brought to me. He is like a mini-me and my best
friend. To watch him grow, learn and pass through some early life moments
(kindergarten, etc) has choked me up at times.

So the regret is because of not knowing how hard it CAN be to have a kid. And
you aren't even in the first phase of it yet in which you have a mate you can
devote to. Plus you hear about it all the time but it is so different to be
living it, but children are exhausting. You want that to be hitting you in
your 20's and 30's at peak energy. I am past 40 now and I feel like a zombie
at times and many other area's of my life have suffered. I think back how much
easier it would have been just to play soccer with him longer if I was 10
years younger.

------
damptowel
Rigidity of thought when young.

------
equalarrow
Hah, this is easy. (This is a stretch of my dumb decisions from 2003-2013)

1\. Decided not to work on a company with a good friend. Friend grew the
company successfully, isn't involved in the day-to-day anymore, he's worth
millions and is trying to think of what he wants to do next. I would have been
a co-founder. All this because I didn't think we would work together well,
which might have been true, but I'll never know.

2\. I walked away from an interview (before interviews became 500% harder by
having to know all the latest algos off the top of my head) where a guy told
me he wanted to make all their Rails developers millionaires in the next year.
I would have learned a lot from these guys because they were building and
hyper-growing 'community' sites once every few months. The company sold to
Monster.com for $400m a year later.

3\. Walked away from another company (a consulting company) where I was one of
the top Rails guys - I helped them build their first Rails project (they were
mostly a .Net & Java shop before). Super smart and stable team, I was offered
a Sr. position and profit sharing. They ended up incubating a few successful
Google ventures. My good friend in the company, after a lot of years of making
good connections and stockpiling away cash, went on to found a company that
Google and other big names backed.

4\. I walked away, after a successful contract, from a design company I had
worked with on multiple occasions. I had friends there and I was well regarded
as a smart developer. They 'only' offered me a Sr. position (I wanted a Dir.
of Technology role). A year later, facebook bought the entire company and some
of the js devs I worked with went on to create React and Flux...

I spent about a decade working on my own startups with CEO's that either (this
affected all 4 of the examples above):

* Didn't understand technology at all

* Were just fuck ups that misused funds and wanted to shoestring years of product development for no reason

* Couldn't decide on how to grow a team to build a sustainable product

Of course, my startups all failed and I never learned or figured out why until
lately. I'm probably in the rule of the majority of businesses failing.

So, what have I learned then?

1\. Fail before you have a family or even a significant other. Failure and
family are a bad mix and you will have less and less time to try to fix
things, if you can.

2\. Learn from others first. I'm fine with pursuing an idea, but see how
others fail and succeed before you step out on your own. You'll be glad you
did.

3\. If someone promises you they're going to exit or you see some momentum
with the team/product, spend a year with them and see what happens. Or even 6
months. Life is short, but a year goes by quickly. If you can get some win out
of a year and this allows you up to be more financially 'free', do it! Once
you can own your time, then the game completely changes.

4\. Be true to yourself about who you really are. Be responsible for your
decisions and get organized about your life. Don't float (for too long). Act
with purpose and don't forget that discipline coupled with action is the most
powerful thing you can be/do in regards to business (I think).

5\. Pay yourself first. Just google this and you'll see why it's smart.

~~~
intellegacy
Why did you walk away from so many good opportunities and instead pursued all
the wrong ones? Do you think it's your judgment? Or bad luck?

------
Xophmeister
So many, many things :(

------
vishalzone2002
regret not learning how to play a musical instrument.

------
tajen
I didn't learn to play ball at all when I was 3. Which translated into a lack
of friends at a later age, which I didn't succeed to fix in time, which
translated into a late first experience with girls, which turned extremely
bad. It may sound like a stretch, but not playing the ball
(football/basketball/handball) in France gets you excluded from most groups
and sucking at manual things harms your self-esteem a lot until ~20 years old.

~~~
bicx
As an American, I would agree with this. I wish I'd stuck with a sport beyond
what my parents made me do as a 7-year-old. While it may not have been my
favorite thing to do, there's a lot I missed out on. When I was a kid, being a
nerd wasn't cool. You didn't make friends that way. That took a toll on self-
confidence until my mid-20s when suddenly my nerd tendencies became really
profitable and appreciated. Before that, I just accepted that people thought I
was a little weird.

But more than that, I realized that there were many life lessons regarding
self-discipline, training, and teamwork that I missed as well. I ended up
working for a startup founded by college athletes (not your stereotypical
jocks, but smart, driven people) and you could see that their leadership,
discipline, and motivational skills were already well-developed from their
soccer days. For me, working on software teams was my first real collaborative
team experience, and I could tell they were leagues beyond me in understanding
and developing team dynamics.

~~~
cdubzzz
> But more than that, I realized that there were many life lessons regarding
> self-discipline, training, and teamwork that I missed as well.

Absolutely this. I did play football in high school and actually was not
really in to it at all (parents forced me to play something). I was also quite
anti-social, in to computers and video games, never went to parties, etc. Then
I got a degree in English literature and spent three years in the Peace Corps.

These things all coalesced in interesting ways for me:

\- Football taught me about self-discipline, training, teamwork, leadership,
etc.

\- My hobby interest in computers from a young age built up a strong technical
foundation and ultimately gave me the skills needed to land my first job.

\- Studying English lit. taught me about effective written and verbal
communication, analytical and critical thinking (beyond what I learned doing
development), etc. and has been massively useful in my work life.

\- Peace Corps taught me how to be social (finally!), patient, self-motivated,
etc. and also about generalities surrounding important things such as culture,
language, history and identity.

All of this stuff has led me to success in the job market and, I think, a
powerful appreciation for my work and the work/life balance. It's very
interesting to think about.

------
gaius
The thing about wishing your life was different in way X is that if it was,
you would be a different person now, wishing it was different in way Y.

------
Pica_soO
I regret those wishful views on the lives of others, the endless attempt to
transform myself into something im not, instead of working and making of the
best with what i got.

~~~
michele_f
You're not alone brother.

------
berntb
What I regret is a single thing: Not finding out about my allergies earlier.

I would have a different and richer life (also economically, but not what I
mean) if I knew I was a bit chronically tired from them, not to mention other
problems I got from that.

On the other hand, I might have f-cked something else up with more available
time/energy.

(Edit: The really weird part is to realize late in life that your personality
is much more positive and cheerful than you thought. You see yourself
differently afterwards.)

~~~
rpazyaquian
How did you find this out? It seems really hard to understand what's messing
you up if your messed-up state seems normal to you.

~~~
berntb
The allergies (and the associated damage from them) got worse. :-) :-(

More detailed: I thought "There seems to be problems when I eat peanuts?" I
bought a bag and ate. And was sick for a week. Then I started experimenting
with anti histamines etc.

(The doctor talked about "food intolerances" and not "allergies". It seems
weird to be so sensitive for an "intolerance", but ok -- I'm not a specialist
doctor.)

------
hasenj
Two things:

1) Believing in religion and being conservative about it too!

2) Allowing myself to become obese during late teens and early twenties.

These two points have done incredible damage to my social life and self
esteem.

------
ebbv
I'll go against the tech culture grain and say I regret not going to college.
I stared working when I was still in high school and I never pursued a degree.
Sometimes I feel like if I had gone to college I might have pursued a
different area of interest. I enjoy programming but I'm almost 40 now and
starting to feel just how disposable all the work I've done for the past 25
years is.

------
ithipster
I regret I have wasted my childhood years.

------
hga
Not learning early enough in my life that there are people who will
shamelessly betray you, even to the point of deliberately and will malice
aforethought ruining your life, or possibly getting your killed, just to
satisfy their own psychological drives.

The former caused me to largely waste ~40% of my life (so far, the percentage
will of course drop as I continue to grow older).

~~~
DenisM
Wow. Any details you want to share?

~~~
hga
For it to be that big a fraction of my life it's of course an example of
parental betrayal, and as I've seen in and outside of my family, hardly a
unique one.

The trick is to realize sooner rather than later that your parents are lying,
perhaps including to themselves, and to stop throwing good time after bad (if
you're talking about your bachelor's degree, there's a good chance it's more
their money and your time).

And if you have siblings, keep in touch with them so you can pass on critical
information. As the eldest, I was blindsided, my following sister believed my
parents' lies and no doubt thought it was a one off, but then experienced the
same thing, allowing my two younger brothers to face the issue with sufficient
knowledge to play it the way they wanted to, given the severe constraints.

In the US, at least, the odds are pretty strong your parents will be required
to contribute to your undergraduate education; me, I "wasted" most of my
primary and secondary schooling (2-12) focusing on becoming a scientist,
without knowing that would ever happen, and then another decade trying to
somehow make it work.

In the meantime, lots of luck and no small amount of skill, plus the habits of
mind developed in pursuing the science track, kept me fed with a roof over my
head and helped me shift to a career of software and systems. In that, I
suppose I was lucky, none of my siblings have enough STEM talent and all have
suffered much more crimped careers, perhaps counting or not my sister who
married well and became a full time mother, and still did some of what she
trained for prior to college (dancing).

As for the "possibly getting your killed", just realize there are normal
seeming people out there who are sufficiently messed up on the inside that the
continued well being of the other people in their lives is simply not
something they (are capable of) care(ing) about. So take how deeply you make a
relationship slowly enough so that you can gauge their character, or lack
thereof. In the case of siblings, don't let natural attachments blind you to
their faults.

In general, don't trust without having some evidentiary basis to believe in
the good will of the other, and never disbelieve your eyes, e.g. if you see
someone taking actions that'll destroy or severely damage your company, take
immediate action. Now, in the case I'm thinking of here, I wasn't in a
position to take decisive action, but if I'd been more aware of what was going
on, and not so focused on the Maximum Effort software project I was leading, I
would have noticed the general sabotage of an on the surface perfectly nice
co-worker in another part of the company.

And taken steps to protect myself and my project and team, and fed useful
information upwards to our common boss, who then might not have been
blindsided when this guy walked out taking our biggest customer. Losing that
customer's project started a set of cascading failures that pretty quickly
killed my project, and soon enough the company. And let me emphasize that guy
did it more for the hell of it than any cunning Machiavellian plan (e.g. he
failed after leaving the company, and his backstabbing of me was totally
orthogonal to any of his financial goals, our projects were completely
disjoint).

Maybe the bottom line is a great line from my favorite history teacher,
"Original Sin is an empirical observation," which the class heartily agreed
with. Believe that evil exists before circumstances _force_ you to do so, or
force dysfunctional accommodations on you that don't directly acknowledge and
allow for it.

