Do Overs - And how often do you think about them?

VaughanJB said:
I was living in Texas, and I accepted a job in Germany. This was my move back to Europe.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have come back to Europe. I should have stayed in the US.

That and broken hearts.
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I find that interesting to hear you say as lately I've been seeing a few videos on Youtube, made by Americans who moved to the EU and now say they're never going back to the USA because they're so happy there. Was it just relationships lost that you wish you could make up? (if you don't mind my asking and if you do, excuse me for being snoopy🫢)
 

Debrah N. said:
I find that interesting to hear you say as lately I've been seeing a few videos on Youtube, made by Americans who moved to the EU and now say they're never going back to the USA because they're so happy there. Was it just relationships lost that you wish you could make up? (if you don't mind my asking and if you do, excuse me for being snoopy🫢)
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Broken hearts was relationships. Or really, a relationship. My first true love. I wasted it. She married, had kids................ I moved to the US.

I loved my time in the US. Everything about it. I miss it. I've been to a few countries, but my heart is in America.
 
Alizerine said:
Considering what I had to work with I feel I have done fairly well. I would like to have made some better investments so life would be easier these days.
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Yeah, we don't all have the same talents and advantages, though choices made can't be ignored. But looking back I made a few "mistakes" however I think I did well enough to meet my needs and I am thankful. I know others who had harder lives than mine.

On balance I think my retirement planning worked out fine. Sure, if I had been putting more away early on I would have more now, but the only thing that worries me on that front are the horror stories about getting really old and ending up in some closet apartment in an awful facility. Then again, my family isn't known for 90 year olds either so at some point I might be given a countdown by the Docs.
 
I would have changed a lot of decisions I made as a teenager. But honestly, I think this kind of regret is a waste of time here and now. There is always something that can be done in the present to make life better. I'd rather do that than rewrite the past. :giggle:
 
I'd have to go WAY back to 1964/65. I graduated in '64 and went to nursing school. I never wanted to be a nurse but my aunt was a nurse and my mother (her sister) pushed me into it. I was more of a "numbers" girl and wanted to do something in accounting. I didn't know how to stand up for myself with my mother. She was very domineering.

I rebelled in my own way and married the first guy that came along, which was a huge mistake. My life snowballed after that and I ended up in one disastrous relationship after another. Then, in 1975, I met my sweet (late) husband, David. My mother hated him and there were other complications, so we parted after 3 years and he went his way and I went mine. We finally got back together in 1997 and got married. The last 26 years have been the happiest of my life. Being without him is so difficult.
 
1. I would have chosen different parents. Come to think about it, were they really my parents? - we were totally different in nearly every respect.
2. I wouldn't have gone to university - I never used 99% of the things I learned.

An American friend here has recently renounced her US citizenship because of the US tax situation. The US is one of only two countries that taxes its citizens who live and work abroad. She and her partner said that they couldn't even think of going back because of healthcare costs.
 
I have thought about it often, when I think about some of the decisions that i made that turned out to be foolish ones, and wish that I could do some things over.
However, knowing me, even if I had a fresh start (and even knew all the bad decisions ahead of time), I am sure that I would still have a bunch of different decisions that I would now be here puzzling over, and wondering why I made THOSE decisions.
So, I guess it is just best to go on from where I am, and do my best to think things through better each time.
 
I wish I could have had my children in my late twenties instead of my teens. I turned down a union electrician apprenticeship at eighteen because I needed more money at that time to take care of my wife and daughter. Short sighted and no father to guide me better.
 
Yeah, where is the time machine? What ifs lead nowhere, I know. They are called counterfactuals
and are studied . Dont like thinking of them!
A British novelist wrote a book about what her life would/might have been, otherwise.
 
Never have joined a certain extremely stifling religious organization.
Never have had kids.
Should have Chosen another Major in college.
 
I would have stayed in college and earned a graduate degree. But, my ex-husband is a bully and he had hired truly one of the most intimidating lawyers in town. There were lawyer magazine stories about her; she was that famous. He knew I had graduated with my bachelors degree and even though I was working full-time already, which is the only requirement of the law and our court order for spouses receiving support, he wanted me to get a better job.

So, idiots who do not know how abusive relationships work (I guess I should not call them idiots. I'm soooo very ungracious, aren't I? I'll call them uninformed. Why do some people expect abused women to be freakin' NICE even after all they have been through? "You'd better be a nice crime survivor or nothing for you!").

So, the uninformed, uneducated, who do not understand how abusers think and work, they supported my ex's quest to make me earn more money than I was and I was so terrified and intimidated by the whole legal and court process, so full of LIES as it can be, that I just did what my abuser told me to do and went for getting a better paying job.

He's a bully. He bullied me for all the years of our marriage and all the years after before I sought the restraining order (an order that was not sought sooner because all my lawyers told me not to), and he has bullied the children too. I have literally had to tell them, sometimes, if they have come to me upset saying, "Dad said I should do this but I don't want to", to NOT listen to him. "I will be IN YOUR CORNER on this - do not listen to him!"

Problem is, I never had anyone in MY corner if I had said I wanted to go to graduate school - not even my own lawyers were in MY corner. That's partly because this all took place in a highly misogynistic town. I also think sometimes people do not think I'm very smart - they don't think I'm bright enough for graduate school. But, that depends on the degree, right? Some require high skills in math, others require high logic and great writing skills, and still others require high levels of creativity and emotional intelligence.

I wish someone would make a chart for that - rate cities by their level of Misogyny. Could be done. Track the Misogyny over time. Could be done just the same way we track racial discrimination.
 
I seldom look back, what is done is done! Like everyone I have made some mistakes and I also have done things that worked out well. I have no regrets.

Life is what we make of it and dwelling on mistakes of the past is not productive and could tend to drag a person down a road that is bad for the future they make.

Focus on today and tomorrow and let the past remain in the past. We should learn from our past, but that is all the past has of value.
 
I would have married at a much younger age, had a family and a house in my retirement years. I would have listened to my parents and not been so much of a rebel. I was too independent and critical of their family values. I wanted everything they were against and paid for it now in my later years.
 

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