Don't interrupt the sorrow.

Writing. Regret. And my love for Joni Mitchell.

I don’t regret anything. Well, not any more.

After finishing my degree, the plan was to go to Harvard to study film. I could cut down on the cost by staying with a family friend in Boston, too. Two years in the city where my favourite film at the time, Goodwill Hunting, was filmed. What an experience.

Needless to say, life got right in my way and instead of having an interesting, character-building experience, I got a job selling computers and spent four years chipping away at my soul and my sanity.

The money was pretty good. I could buy things for myself. I could eat at fancy restaurants. I was paying off my student loan for a course that had absolutely nothing to do with the job I was working in. (I was very careful to call it a job. I would never refer to it as a career. That would be like giving up.)

Photo by Zhanhui Li on Unsplash

I was reading and writing in my car on my lunch breaks and being ridiculed by co-workers on my return. (I was very careful to call them co-workers. I would never call them colleagues. That would imply that we had something in common. We didn’t. I had hopes and dreams and ambitions and they were zombified automatons content to plod down that long road to the middle.)

Then it all got taken away.

I was made redundant and given a couple of months of pay to see me through to getting another job that would squash my self-esteem and render me a human barcode within minutes of walking through the glass doors of another minimalist lobby.

Oh, and my first child was three months from being born.

If I didn’t finish writing a book now, not only was a doomed to get stuck in a position where I had to work somewhere I hated in order to provide, I was also going to regret never trying. The Harvard thing had already knocked me, it would be a tough road back if I didn’t sit my arse in the chair and give it a go.

There’s a story about getting published, which isn’t relevant to this, but, needless to say, I became a writer. And I researched the idea of regret. And I’ve written about it a fair amount. And here are some of the top things that people say they regret before they die:

1. I wish I’d lived a life true to myself, not what others expected me to be.

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 let myself be happier.

5. I wish I had spent more time with family/friends.

There’s a lot to unpick here but I try to keep my Substack posts at around the 4-minute mark. But we can all identify with some, if not all of these.

I love working, writing, but I know that it can sometimes be to the detriment of time with others. I also want that. Finding it difficult to express feelings is a huge one. Not going after something you love or ending things with somebody you don’t can feel like wasted time. A huge regret. And being true to yourself seems to be ever more difficult in a time when many people are two versions of themselves - one online and one in real life - and they later realise that neither is who they really are.

We can’t be happy because we are working too much - please step away from your desk at lunchtime - and that means we don’t see our friends and families as often, but we do see all the best parts of their lives online and that makes us feel even worse.

Regret sucks. It’s a weight. For all we know, it gives you cancer. And this is not a post to say ‘Go out and spread your wings’ or ‘Reach for the stars’. This isn’t a motivational poster on the wall of your ground-level office with bars on the windows. It’s a long, old diatribe leading to me saying that I bought a ticket to see Joni Mitchell in concert.

You’ll notice that it’s in October. It’s also in Los Angeles. I’ll tell you now. I couldn’t really afford the ticket. And I certainly can’t afford to go to LA. But I bought it. Because, damn, I would regret it if I didn’t even try.

There is a list of musicians that I have always wanted to see: Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, Damien Rice, Bon Iver, Steely Dan, Michael Jackson, John Martyn, John Mayer, Bob Dylan and, of course, my favourite, Joni Mitchell.

She hasn’t played a concert for decades. I’ve seen everyone on that list (and others) apart from Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Dylan has been on tour since the 70s, I’m sure I’ll catch him at some point, but Joni is like the Holy Grail. This concert is a one-off. There definitely won’t be another and who knows whether she will even make it to this one. (She has been ill.)

This could be some adventure. I don’t know if it will happen. I don’t know if I’ll make it there. But I do know that when I’m asked about my regrets before my lights go out forever, I really only want to bring up the Harvard thing. Although I may end up regretting selling a kidney for my plane ticket. I’ll keep you posted.