Want to share your regret in the book? Email regrets2024@gmail.com and I'll be in touch soon.
Staring down the barrel of my fifth decade, I have some regrets.
I wish I’d quit drinking sooner. I wish I’d known how to make the best of a top tier TV agent before they dropped me. I wish I’d said ‘yes’ when that famous TV writer asked me ‘do you want to be a performer?’. I wish I’d known what to do with my hair (that bleach blonde bob was a war crime). I wish I’d gotten into exercise sooner and not just in response to body-shaming to ‘prove’ I was a ‘good’ fatty. I wish I’d kept in touch with people I did my A-levels with. I wish I’d applied more rigorous criteria than ‘must have good night life’ when choosing a university. I wish I’d set up a Patreon when That Blog went viral (I’ve done some sums – if 1% of those who’d read it donated £1, I’d have made enough for a deposit for a house within a fortnight). Popular wisdom (and Frank Sinatra) has it that it’s better to live a life with no regrets, and that everything will work out for the best in the end. And sure, things have worked out nicely enough for me so far – I’m healthy and happy(ish), I’m a published author and full-time writer, and I have a very handsome and sweet-smelling partner. But there’s a part of me that thinks if I’d got my act together and been less timid / more practical / less drunk, I could still have all the above plus more friends, a more successful career, and a massive house.
Regret shares space in our minds with its ugly cousins shame, guilt, envy, but its impact on us – and our relationship with it - is unique. No one gets a tattoo that says “no guilt”, and Edith Piaf didn’t sing “No Remorse’” (that would have been a much darker song!). So my first job in this book is to define what regret is, and in what singular way it affect us and our relationships compared with other thorny feelings. You can’t regret being born into a cult, or hit by a bike, or having a dreadful family. You didn’t choose those things. Regret – proper, cellular-level regret that needles you awake at night – is the result of decisions you’ve made (or haven’t made) and things you’ve said or done (or haven’t said or done). And because every single one of us occasionally behaves in a way that is at odds with who we think we are, and what we think our values are, every single one of us experiences regret. The only exceptions are the under-fives (because their brains aren’t yet full developed) and sociopaths. Regret is not self-pity. Regret is a by-product of curiosity and self-examination – two essential components to a life well-lived. And it can serve a powerful tool for divining what we really want (as opposed to what we think we want) and how to take steps to get it.