Today’s prompt: REGRET
There’s a saying (I’m paraphrasing) that “you regret all the shots you didn’t take” — something a sports star said.
There are some shots I don’t regret not taking. I don’t regret making some career choices that kept me closer to home and more available to my children.
I don’t regret letting my daughter dress herself in dots and stripes when she was little rather than being matchy-matchy. She found herself of self and style more easily that way, in my opinion.
It’s a little hard lately in this latest life iteration not to regret being away from writing, proofreading and editing so long. I always had my finger in the pie, but there was a lengthy detour through child health policy.
I have decided for the most part, though, that in addition to the principle that things truly happen for a reason, my career path may have put me a bit behind competitively for some of the types of things I want to do now, but gave me so much that makes me a well-rounded professional:
- Having to work through the federal government process to get funding for a start-up program
- Multiple procurement processes for health plans, dental plans, and third party administrators (the TPA procurements taught me so much about technology, at least at a rudimentary level)
- Becoming a Certified Public Manager
- Overseeing the dispute process at a program with several hundred thousand enrollees
- Supervising people
*** end of five minutes***
There is more I got out of those years, more than five minutes can hold. There were difficult bosses (and good ones), boards of directors to satisfy, the perfect timing of having a communications person who knew Twitter well and taught me when Twitter was new.
I got victories and defeats. Did some things well and messed up a few too (especially when it came to being the leader my people needed). Saw every single county in Florida.
I got so many things to write about, and that’s something for which I have no regrets.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via creator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
Love this. I think it’s important to name our regrets. They are a part of life. Loved this post. Blessed to be your neighbor this week friend.
Thanks. And I am so glad we are neighbors this week – I think it has been some time since that occurred!
Enjoyed reading this. Love the polka dot dress. I’ll think about it the next time my toddler grandson walks in here with his rain boots and it’s not raining, but he insists on wearing them.
Yes! Love it.
So true, even if all our experiences are not exactly what we would have liked we can learn valuable lessons from them. And I love seeing the combinations kids come up with when they dress in their own style!
It really got crazy there for a few years when my daughter was little. She would be put to bed, then change clothes 3 or 4 times (this is a different issue than the matching (or not)!). I never knew what ensemble I would find my child in at wake-up time, but I could count on it not being pajamas!
I have never really thought on my regrets, because there is so much I don’t regret. I think the one thing I truly regret was not following up on an opportunity to visit Kenya in the early 70’s for a total eclipse of the sun. Who knows what that may have led to?
Oh yes — I can imagine what that trip might have meant to you! I regret things I said without thinking that ended up being hurtful, but I suppose that is a whole other post that would take longer than five minutes to work through.
Wonderful to be able to say – “and for that I have no regrets”! Really nice when it applies to our career path, too!
I agree!
i enjoyed your post paula:) i’m at #47.
Thanks, Martha. I look forward to visiting!