Regrets are things that you wish had gone differently or things that didn’t go so well for you. Maybe you want a bit of a do-over, so that things could change for the better.
I don’t really like the word regret because it’s got way too many negative connotations. I try my best to live as regret-free a life as possible, but that’s impossible, really. I might not believe in predestination, but I do believe that oftentimes, there are things that happen in our lives that we might not expect or imagine, but we’re grateful for regardless. Perhaps you regret not getting a job after the interview went so well, but later applied for and got a different, much better, promotion. Maybe if you hadn’t split from your long-term partner, you’d have never met the love of your life.
It’s silly to hypothesise about what could have been or what should have been. But I think that it is useful to think back on the year that’s just gone and think about the mistakes that we made, and what we’ve learned going forward. Here are my top three regrets of 2022.
More reading
I swear I make this mistake every year. I always resolve to read more, to challenge and push myself to consume more literature, but it never happens. Either I can’t be bothered to read those 50 pages every night before bed or other priorities take over.
Or, let’s be real for a second here, I just decide to do something else. This is all well and good, but I feel like one of the best ways to become the best writer that you can be is by reading widely. If I’m not doing that, how can I get better at writing? My Goodreads goal this year was 30 books and, as it stands, I’d need to read more than 1 book a day to reach that target6. Oops. More reading next year is a must.
More writing
On that note, every year I promise that I’ll do more writing, and it never pans out. I’ve written more than 40,000 words for the blog this year, which I’m chuffed to pieces about, but it’s not really getting me any closer to becoming a prolific fiction writer. I feel like I’m pretty good at blog writing now because of all of the practice that I’ve had; I need more practice at fiction writing if I want to get better at it!
I’m resolving to use the app Daily Prompts (not sponsored!), which generates a new prompt every day to help you with ideas for short stories, to help flesh out my fictional world. As of today, that’s going pretty well. Whether it’ll continue into the new year is yet to be seen.
More self care
Who are we if we don’t look after ourselves? While you should always be wary of the implications of your actions on other people, I think it’s pretty fundamental that you should put yourself first every once in a while. Look after yourself by following a self-care routine.
Now, this doesn’t need to be the classic ‘have a bath, take an hour for me time, meditate’ because that’s not for everyone. It could be that you’ll take 30 minutes to yourself every day to do whatever you enjoy, guilt-free. Come up with a list of non-negotiables that you need to do everyday to ensure that you’re looking after yourself. That’s something that we could all do with.
What are your top regrets of 2022? Let me know in the comments and we can work out a way forward together.
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Hardly Hamilton 
Strong messages here. You shouldn’t regret things as they cannot be changed and often serve a purpose in your present life. I think writing, reading and more self care won’t do you any harm at all 🙂
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Absolutely, all about the positive changes in 2023!
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