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.

After 20 someodd years we were both available and rekindled our relationship. Things were going well for months until I found out that she had cheated on her husband for years with a man and was continuing to see him while we were together.

Honestly, I was happier with the dream of what I thought we would have been but I lost than the reality.

I'm not claiming your experience would be the same at all, just saying to appreciate the what-if you can hold on to.

On the other hand, in the breakup, she treated me really badly/poorly, so it remains like a song where the first 90% was great then someone decided to run their fingernails down a chalkboard for the finale.

I heard through the grapevine that the next guy she dated, she stayed with and eventually married.

Maybe she still feels the same way.

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

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.

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.

Banks, power plants & other utilities, satellites, etc. spring to mind, sure, but even the more mundane.

If you're on OS X/macOS, here is the source code to the command line utility `cat`: http://opensource.apple.com//source/text_cmds/text_cmds-71/c...

Released by Berkley in 1989 making it at least 27 years old already, there are lines of code in there probably going back to the 1977 release, because this of course goes back to old school Berkley System Distribution release. 40 years old, next year, then. Can't see it's going to be modified much in the next 10 years.

I expect there is code being written today that will be considered useful enough to still be used in 50 years. I know a guy who worked on weather modelling for the Met Office - I bet his code is still in the models being run in 50 years time. It might have been modified, but there is a real chance his code stays intact.

Code has a half-life, not a use-by date. Work on code that embraces that, and write code with that attitude.

If you're working on some crappy app or site you _know_ will be dead in 2 years time, you might be OK with that. You might not. If you're not, go look for the careers where the half-life is extended.

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.

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.

Spend time with your kids, keep your marriage together. Love your family. They'll (eventually) see that you did, and they'll care very much about that.

I would say its the lack of a conscious choice that makes us using our phones so much.

Where was such analysis involved in driving my usage patterns?

Worrying what your future grandchildren think about you is a ridiculous way to live your life.

It is easy to get your perception of meaningful poisoned by ideas like religion, so one has to be careful how he spends his precious moments in his window of consciousness

Even if they do, it won't matter to you because you will cease to exist.

I plan on keeping these things in the family as long as possible.

Make things and leave them behind, and hopefully your family will still cherish them. I write and make board and video games, I'm hoping some of those will stay in the family. I also want to get into woodworking once I own a home, and make custom components for my games.

Once I managed to disconnect the stuff from the people/memories, I felt a huge relief just decluttering. I have maybe a book or a note from people, and of course photos, but I have procured only furniture/cuttlery/paintings/etc that I like, not those I inherited "just because". And I'd gladly see my children just chuck everything I don't have time to get rid of before I die, and hope that they remember me fondly as a person, not as someone dumping a houseful of emotional and literal baggage on them.

I'm likely projecting, and am sorry/happy if this is not your situation, but I identified up to a point and wanted to suggest to people like me that decluttering/chucking out old junk can be very relieving.

My big regret: not moving to the PacNW when I had the chance in my mid-20s. Things would probably be extremely different for me now if I had. Or maybe I should have tried moving to Asia; women there appreciate intelligent but quiet men who have good careers.

So if I'm really really lucky, 50 years from now someone will still be using some code I wrote. That's really the best I can hope for as far as having "an impact".

But that still means that if you're 50, the best you're likely to do (unless you're rich) is a woman who's in her early 40s, and that's really too old to have kids without assistance, and you'll run a greater risk of Down's.

Even if you're really rich, the 20-something girls who'll want you are going to be materialistic airheads, and will get boring pretty quick, and will not have any real feelings for you.

The other problem is finding a willing female. I don't know about you, but I would not expect to find a 25-30 year old woman wanting to have kids with me when I'm in my 50s, and really don't think that's realistic even at my current age (early 40s). Maybe you're better at talking your way into much younger women's pants than me.

I can also look for women around 40 like myself (which I've done), but here there's tons of problems: 1) many already have kids, and don't want more; 2) the ones that do are usually never married and suddenly are realizing they don't have much time left to have kids. Many of them are never-married for a good reason... (they're so nutty that no man sticks around for long). And they're frequently desperate, but in a bad way: they won't give anyone a chance because they want to find Mr. Perfect after a single date. They have completely unrealistic expectations; I've seen it many times here.

As an aside, I went on a Tinder date with a 43yo woman a while ago. We talked on the phone before meeting up, and one of the first things she told me was how she wanted kids and had already tried one round of IVF!! Talk about TMI... Of course, if she's on fertility drugs and taking IVF, that means that 1) she's likely infertile already, and 2) considering I'm just starting with her, it's likely she'll keep doing IVF while we're dating and end up with some anonymous donor's kid, and not mine. (And if we did have a kid together, it almost certainly wouldn't be conceived naturally.) Luckily, I guess, she didn't want to meet up again after the first date.

Honestly, I think it's a lost cause. At this age range, it's just too hard to find someone that wants kids and is in a good position to have them, and still is a great partner in every other way. The dating pool is simply too small, and most of the people in the dating pool have way too many issues.

Luckily, I just started dating someone who's really nice, very attractive, and really likes me, but she doesn't want kids. Considering this is the first woman I've had more than 2 very casual dates with since my divorce 2 years ago, the idea of passing up this opportunity just isn't appealing.

(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.

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!

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.

Sleep is underrated. It improves our health, memory, mood, immunity and more. Here are some ways to improve your sleep and get to sleep on time.

BLUE LIGHT

    Flux: This program dims the blue light output from your monitor as the sun sets and brings the blue light back as the sun rises. Blue light is a natural signal of daylight that causes our body to produce less natural melatonin. Melatonin causes drowsiness. Flux can be disabled for color sensitive work. https://justgetflux.com/



    Cell phone apps: There are plenty of cell phone apps which have this same feature. I use Twilight for android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.lux&hl=en 



    Sunlight in the morning: Leave your blinds open while you sleep. When the sun rises in the morning it will naturally wake you up early and help establish your sleep cycle. 



    Tape over any unnecessary blinking lights 

    Less abrupt noises: You'll sleep best if there aren't any abrupt light or noise changes. White noise can help drown out any sounds that would disturb your sleep. You could play a white noise sound from a site like 

or

RainyMood: http://www.rainymood.com/

You can also use other noises like the "wurr" of a fan.

CONSISTENCY

    Consistency is key to sleep. Humans aren't able to bank sleep well. For example, trying to catch up on sleep missed during the week by sleeping in on Sunday isn't very effective. Even if you can't go to sleep at the same time each night, waking up every day at the same time will quickly put your body on a good sleep schedule and make you fell more rested overall. 

    Melatonin: Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced by the body in response to sundown. Modern artificial lights can disrupt this process. It is sold over the counter and is non-addictive, unlike other sleeping medication. https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/melatonin-and-sleep                                                                                                                                                                  
    Ear plugs: These are great for dulling noises from inconsiderate family members or roommates while you're trying to sleep. I still can wake up to an alarm even if my earplugs do stay in all night.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
    Read a book: Reading is a great way to spend time before bed to get sleepy and take your mind off of the day's stress. 

    Cell Phone: Cell phones often require a lot of hand movements, uncomfortable head positions, and bright lights. Avoid looking at your cell phone in bed. To make yourself get up at the first alarm in the morning, plug your phone in out of reach of your bed so you have to stand up to turn off the alarm. 



    Computer: Computers are also distracting just like cell phones. Cell phones and computers are so interactive that they can keep your brain busy and stave off drowsiness. 

    Heart rate: Avoid strenuous tasks right before bed. To go to sleep you're going to need to let your heart-rate drop to your resting state. 



    Eating: Don't eat right before bed. It may make laying down uncomfortable. 



    Drinking: You want to be hydrated but not so much you'll need to get up for the bathroom in the middle of the night. Put a glass of water on your bedside table so you don't have to stand up if you are thirsty in the middle of the night. If I ever wake up at night I take a sip of water and plunge right back to sleep. This water is good to hydrate first thing in the morning too. 

    Launder your sheets frequently: This is easy and makes the bed much more comfortable and hygienic. You spend a lot of time in bed. How many hours would you wear clothing before washing it? Washing pillow cases often helps mitigate acne as well. 



    Use a blanket and a sheet: Too many people don't have sheets on their beds properly. A sheet will help you regulate your temperature by adjusting how much of your body is covered by each thickness of bedding. Tuck that sheet in at the foot end. Tangled sheets can make uncomfortable lumps in the bed. 



    Don't do other activities in your bed: Reserve your bed as a place where you sleep. Do homework, use your computer and do other tasks elsewhere. This way you can condition yourself to associate your bed with sleep so you'll get in the right mindset as soon as you lay down each night. 

    Loose fitting clothing or none at all: don't sleep in jeans, tight bras, etc. Let your skin air out. Let your muscles relax into positions your clothing might normally prevent. 

    Plan ahead: Get yourself ready for bed ~30 minutes before you intend on sleeping by brushing your teeth, changing clothes, and getting some water. 

    Stretching before bed relaxes the body and the added flexibility helps to eliminate discomfort. 



    Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Flex and relax each muscle group in order from your head to your toes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_muscle_relaxation

    Sometimes I can't sleep because my mind races with thoughts. This is worse if those thoughts are stressful. I like to write things down so I can forget about them for the night. 



    Tell yourself a story: To distract yourself you can tell yourself a story as you fall asleep. Establish characters with backgrounds, talents, and motives and then send them on an adventure. Pretty soon you'll be exhausted and give up on story as you drift to sleep.

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.

This is something I wish I had learned sooner, playing with other people is actually better the worse you are.

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.

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

Also don't stress about it because stress generally worsens the tinnitus!

- 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!

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.

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

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.

I've stayed in research, and all those math courses have given me a firm foundation on which to solve real science problems--I see that now. But I cannot regret going through what was fundamentally a learning process, and stepping too far in the wrong direction.

I've been trying to catch up somehow but seems like the time is always running away from me.

I write code in my spare time that makes bets in APIs. It's sort of "sports algotrading". As such I care about probability a lot. I found it quite hard to get a grip, and even now I have to hit the books regularly.

It's rewarding, but take it slow and build up. Sometimes you have to treat advanced maths a bit like you would a fitness regime: what does the C25K of the area you're trying to learn look like? Once that's done, what's the 10K version? The half-marathon? The marathon? And so on.

Everybody starts by getting off the couch though - even if you're working through basic probability classes on khan, you're one step ahead of the you that carried on messing about on HN or Reddit or whatever.

"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable." - Socrates

Unfortunately, she only goes when I go, and she's retiring in seven months. I don't know if she's going to stick with it when she leaves. I hope she does, as she's been making some great progress.

It's lovely that you got her into exercise, when she leaves you could still arrange to meet her at the gym for workouts assuming she doesn't live miles from the gym, retiring can be a nasty shock for lots of people since they go from full days to "what the fuck do I now" in a weekend.

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

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.

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-...

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

A CrossFit instructor I know says the best reason to squat is that you will be able to go to the toilet unassisted when you are 80...

I'm not even referring to just being able to lift something, because plenty of larger framed people can do that. I remember the first time I realized I was no longer "big" came when I squeezed through a thin pathway in my closet. Last week, I ended up doing 7 chained backflips at a trampoline park. What was the point of both incidents? "To see if I could".

If you do some forms of training, you can become very flexible. If you are martial art minded, you can find yourself very disciplined.

Finally, you do get more confident (what someone might see as narcissist or how someone might manifest it).

That aside, most other lifts are fine. The only other one I would suggest people avoid is bench pressing with the smith rack (that's the rack where the bar is fixed and only moves on the vertical dimension). You'll get weightlifter's shoulder from doing that. Stick to dumbbells.

* http://www.bboyscience.com/injury-rates/

I'd love to do it again, but I can't see how I'd ever justify the decision. Luckily swimming, running, yoga are all just as fun.

I still dislike paying as much as I do though.

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.

Side note from a few days ago: Sebastiao Salgado (72) believes photography in process of extinction

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2016/10/28/se...

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.

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.

That sounds terrible, so sorry for you ;)

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.

If the path upward involves management, and that doesn't appeal to you, consider looking for a company with a better technical job ladder. You can climb the ladder without going into management.

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).

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.

> "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"

It's like you're writing about a future version of me. I'm now just pondering getting more into infosec.

Doesn't this mean that you're dealing with Windows security problems all the time? That sounds like pure hell; I think I'd rather work as a janitor.

Still doing application architecture, cloud architecture/etc... for a couple of our groups as well, which is a nice change sometimes.

Definitely worth checking out; oftentimes you can call ahead/show up and they'll give you a tour around the place.

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.

Equally valid for relationships, of course.

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Programming might be easier to get into though

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)

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.

I guess one could try to create one's dream job within one company, but it would be a long and ongoing fight, not just a matter of talking with the boss.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!).

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good to know the happy ending, though. Congrats!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

- 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.

* 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

When I'm thinking about it now, I'm living poly (8 years) for longer in my life than mono (4 years). I'm 31 and started dating with 19. So not much to regret, I guess. Most poly folks I know started with >40, when the kids finally were out.

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.

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.

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... [2]:http://electronics.stackexchange.com/ [3]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340348

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.

Thanks for the recommendation!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Getting involved with religion.

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

Not cracking procrastination.

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

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.

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.

I eventually got a divorce at 30 (unrelated), and I had some great sex for a while but then got married again. While, I love my spouse, I think back on those moments of freedom and wildness often. Wish I had more memories of them.

Some tips (from the person who started late): Don't do one nighters - they're just not memorable long-term. Don't do it drunk - it dulls the memory. Don't do it just for the sex either - it's way, way more enjoyable when you're really into someone. And, don't waste time with people who have no passion or intuitiveness. If they can't kiss well or seem to lack interactivity, it's probably not worth it, no matter how much they may want you.

Nowadays the only way I can have intimate relationships is via prostitutes; however I don't visit them often as I can see through their acting, for once I would like to have an intimate relationship with someone who is truly into me, but then I am 33 and my libido is fading (yay!) I know that I will regret not having sex in my 30's and 20's in my 40's but I feel powerless.

As far as how to find them, don't use dating services. It's way too hard for 'normal' guys to compete. Women get so much attention on those services that it boosts their expectations, and they become more selective. Instead, you have to go to the places that they go.

As for looks, put it in context. Unless you're in one of the high male areas (where competition naturally forces men to up their game), most men are pretty average looking. If you look around, I'm guessing you'll see lots of men who are in the middle. That's your baseline. And, if you can get 5-10% better, then it's remarkably more effective.

As a man, if you can get the basics right (personal hygiene, good clothes), you are already in the top quantile. Bummer about the height, but there are also women who are not very tall.

Actually, I its the shorter women who have higher standards for male height, the most "harsh" rejections (due to height) have come from short women.

Taller women have been friendlier/more polite but at the end of the day I still get rejected.

So if you're 16 and want to have sex with someone who's 16 the only certain advice I can provide is you're not likely to stop wondering what it would have been like any time soon, and over time the odds very rapidly reach zero (roughly by the time you graduate HS?), so get out there while you can ... while avoiding diseases and pregnancies. Of course seeing as older, smarter, and far more experienced versions of yourself repeatedly manage to fail to avoid diseases and pregnancies remarkably often, maybe forever wondering is better than forever herpes/hiv or forever having kids while you were still a kid yourself.