Joe Peacock is getting pretty damned good at just making me stop whatever I am doing and just flooring me. He’s been doing a few posts recently about going out and doing something. Earlier today, he posted a blog about The Top Five Regrets of Dying and his reactions to it (if you haven’t read it already, please do yourself a favor and do so. It’s kind of important in order to understand better what the heck I’m talking about here). Basically, he read an article about a book written by a nurse who cares for patients during the last 12 weeks of their lives. During that time, they had moments of clarity and expressed regret for not doing certain things and found that they had five main themes:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I looked at these and then read the post and then was hit really hard with the thought: Holy crap. I feel (or have recently felt) every one of these. Every. Single. One. I started to make this into one post, but it was quickly turning into the longest post ever and I didn’t want to post it up all at once. So what I’m going to do is cover the first two points today and then the other three tomorrow. And instead of the long, rant-y paragraphs I was starting to do, I’m going to give them a little structure: what the problem is, a little background (if applicable/possible), and how I am fixing it (or how I plan to fix it). It just makes a lot more sense that way (to me at least).

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

There have been only two (technically three, but I lump two of them together) things that I feel are expected of me that I don’t want to do but feel like I will be a disappointment (possibly a failure) if I don’t do them:

• Get married and have kids. I ranted about it in a previous entry, so I won’t get too far in depth with this one. It’s just a normal thing for women in my age range from where I’m from (St. Pete, FL) with the upbringing I had (Southern Baptist) to get married and have kids early. I’m still working on not trying not to feel defensive whenever someone asks me why I haven’t done these things yet (there’s no reason for me to have to be). I also have had a discussion with M. about what his thoughts/feelings were on the subject and have found out that we both agree that we may want those things someday, but not right now. And will only do both of those things when both of us want to and are comfortable doing so.
• Higher education. I don’t want to get my Master’s degree. It’s expensive and right now all the jobs that I am looking at require a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience. But I feel like I have to. Like I owe it to my parents to keep going to school and getting all the degrees possible in order for them to be proud. Whether or not this is the case, I don’t know. We don’t really talk about these (or any really serious) types of things. I already have my Bachelor’s degree and like to learn about whatever interests me when I have the free time to do so. So I don’t really see the appeal or have the drive to get my Master’s degree other than I feel like I may be disappointing my parents if I don’t.

I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

This isn’t as big as a problem as the others in some aspects (I’m currently a contract employee, so what I’m able to do under the given scope of work is very limited), but kind of ties in to the others. But I do some things that make myself miserable during my work day:

• I let myself get too worked up over little shit that I have no control over. I would quite often feel my blood pressure rise and would have to go for a walk (since I quit smoking) or just step away for a second in order to allow myself to calm down. But recently, I have gotten a lot better about it because whenever I feel myself start to get worked up I think: it’s just a job. I still come in every day and do my job to the best of my ability, but I’m not doing myself any good here (or at home) by letting things get to me that-ultimately-don’t have any affect on my personal life or who I am. No one has asked me to do anything illegal/unethical, so why the hell am I letting myself get worked up? It doesn’t make sense. So, for the past week or two I have been keeping these things in mind and have found that I have been feeling a lot less stressed out and generally happier.
• I also am quite bad about letting other people’s feelings affect me. When someone has a bad day, I let that change my (otherwise good or indifferent) day into a bad one. I need to train myself to be sympathetic when others are having a bad day and empathize with them when relevant. But that’s it. It does no one (especially not me) any good to make myself have a bad day on someone else’s behalf. It’s not going to magically make them feel better and will only make me feel worse. So I’m going to stop that (easier said then done, but it’s just one of those things you can’t make a plan for and just have to do it).