no regrets

Regrets are some of the heaviest things to carry. Sometimes I think regret comes easier to those of us who constantly imagine “what if” because we can see so clearly how things might have gone differently. I am grateful I’ve learned (am constantly learning) to extend grace to my past self and let much of that go. It helps that I am happy in my life: I can’t regret the choices that have led me here without denying my joy and satisfaction in where I am now.

The regrets that stick with me have come from choices motivated by fear or others’ perceived expectations. Fear most often leads me to inaction or taking the safer or more familiar option. Sometimes, that’s tied up in what I anticipate are other people’s expectations.

I was a people-pleaser kid. For the first 20 years of my life, I felt largely defined by others’ expectations, and that was damn hard to break from. So when I was 23 and panicking about my impending wedding, I had to sit with that anxiousness and work through it to know that marriage was a choice I was making for my own life, not just because that was the next expected step. Some similar soul-searching happened when I was trying and failing to get pregnant. “Be careful what you wish for” is a warning that certainly applies to becoming a parent, so I needed to be sure that was a choice I made for myself, not because it was expected.

One thing I never truly interrogated was writing. I mean, I was only eight when I picked writing as my career. And while for decades I let fear of rejection prevent me from pursuing that parts that would have actually make it a career, I’ve never seriously reconsidered.

For a long time, my vision of writing-as-career has involved teaching as well as publishing, without ever really stopping to consider if I’d be good at it (assumed yes) or enjoy it. There was always joy in writing. I never wondered if I’d enjoy the act of teaching.

Although I never asked the question, I now have the answer. I love seeing a kid go from only whispering to his mom to contribute to our collaborative storytelling to confidently yelling out his answers, or another kid slinking off early from a workshop because she has to write now (and it’s the highest form of flattery that she gave hers the same title as my workshop story), or the parade of emotions as my mentee realizes that the way they approach writing is *their own process* and not a lack of discipline that somehow needs fixing.

It’s all incredible magic. How could I not love it?

I can’t even regret the years I spent just writing without submitting or querying because they let me discover the kind of writer I want to be, and to actually reach that skill level. My early stuff is fine, but the weight of outside expectations would have worked to limit what my writing and stories could become. And now I’m at a point where I’m grateful for each rejection instead of spiraling into self-doubt and more fear.

The past couple weeks have hammered home the fact that my eight-year-old self knew what she was doing, knew herself in a deep, fundamental way, all those years ago. (I’ve even enjoyed my recent adventures in graphic design and marketing.) For a career I chose more than three decades ago? I have no regrets.