What is/are your "What could have been" in your life?

[Max Chill]

There comes a point where we were given opportunities to step up our lives but are under circumstances that alters our decision. What's your "What Could Have Been" in life?

 

[Jaguar Koning]

I'm not getting into details, i would say that, i should have just, walk away from them, far far away when i had the opportunity...

 

[Thereal]

Being honest with the gurl I liked

I'm pretty young so I don't have any good ones yet. We'll see if that'll change in a couple years.

 

[ThyOde17]

For me, this question just highlights the fact that we basically have one at least every single day, we just don't realize it. If I kept track of them all I would have walked as many new paths as there are people in my city.

 

[Jill Stingray]

I'm not sure if it's my hubris, or if I'm too young, but when I reflect on my life thus far I'm pretty satisfied that all the decisions I made were the right ones. No real nagging regrets or anything, though this may change in the future re: family.

 

[MarchToTheSea]

if things went as planned with my ex. used to think about it in a "i want that life" but after all this time it's become more out of curiousity as time goes on. where would i work? where would i be living? what would life look like? would i even be playing music anymore? would i have moved on to something else?

i guess ultimately i dodged a bullet. girl is wacked. she was back then too, but from what i hear not much has changed. plus brining ids into this world, as we have planned....id never forgive myself for that.

 

[Emmy Fitz]

I studied film at my community college for three years and had a lot of potential. My classmates always liked my work, my professors mentored me because they expected highly of me, I was volunteering at filmmaking camps for high schoolers to help teach them the craft. I wasn't a Kubrick or anything like that, but I had an unpretentious and tongue in cheek style that my peers found unique. I applied to some of the best film schools in the country when my time their was up; I ended up deciding when transferring to study history instead, because my Plan B was to be a history teacher and figured I didn't need a film degree anyway. Those two years at university was definitely the biggest regret of my life. I worked at the on campus studio where I got to make my own show and stuff, but it all felt unsatisfying because I was studying something that I didn't even intend to be my life goal full time. Plus the school I went to was bougie and isolating because I couldn't find a social group to hang out with. I had plenty of friends in community college and high school, but being a middle class kid in goodwill clothes walking around a rich kid school got really isolating. A lot of the students there were rich foreigners and celebrity kids so it was a lot of BMWs, influencer clothes, and top of the line gadgets, meanwhile I'm there, a mopy goth transgirl, with a 15 year old car, a loud ass laptop I bought second hand, and messy hair. It wasn't fun and I dropped out right as the pandemic was looming, and spent a Brian Wilson-esque year laying in bed doing nothing. My passion left, I hated myself, my depression was spiraling out of control.

I really wish I would've gone to a different school and studied what I wanted. I applied to NYU, UCLA, Chapman, all the big guys and could've gone and met other passionate students and made even more art. But no, for some reason I decided to study for a teaching credential at a school I felt out of place at. Biggest mistake of my entire life, easily.

 

[xdsoftware]

I had a Jewish friend once.

It's a huge "what would have been" considering she was linked to several banks and was a very elite student.

To be honest, I think I would have lost her anyways, due to my rising extremist political beliefs

 

[Pangolin]

Every person you could've been exists out there. Each choice opens up alternate universes.

For me:
Soldier
Marine
Plumber
Electrician
Help desk operator for the city
Stayed with my ex.
Retuned to the homeland

Soldier/marine
I may have or may have not had the opportunity to become the boot of the state. I am very thankful my life did not go down this route but I'm also fearful that the me that did is out there.

Plumber/electrician
Didn't want dirty hands or to get shocked and a worn body at 40. This seems like the life that would've been the most rewarding if also the most difficult and the shortest.

Help desk operator for the city
Jerks never called me back. If you aren't going to hire someone at least let them know you aren't. Leaving then hanging is an asshole move. This one seems like it would've been a boring dead end of quiet desperation as I end up trapped in a job I hate as a bureaucrat for a low level city

Stayed with my ex
I felt disrespected and a tool. A means to an end. Psychological manipulation and alternate reality. Refuse to enter more details.

Returned to the homeland
This one could've been anything but odds are I'd be involved in organized crime and dead by 30. Awful.

 

[Deepwaterjew]

I could be chopping wood or some shit but nooooo the girl I liked was a lesbian. Many such cases!

 

[Aral]

Back the only college year I did 4-5 years ago I sorta befriended one of the Japanese girls. I was studying Japanese at the time and there was a couple dozen or so exchange students. Most of them were cool. We were both shy so we didn't speak until a while into the year, when we got stuck together during a ski outing that we were going to with the students' association. We were too physically awkward to ski (for her) and snowboard (for me), so we just sat down in the snow waiting for the others to come back. There was a bit of a language barrier, her French wasn't great and neither was my Japanese, but we really enjoyed each other's company. She was also an artist and we looked at deviantart on our phones on the way home. We saw each other a couple more times, we had tea in a cozy little café, but then I met a Korean girl with whom I got close super (too) fast, and I felt I had to make a choice.

I picked the Korean, who was very nice and popular in public (the kinda magnetic extrovert a lot of people know, but nobody is actually close to) but unstable and sometimes downright abusive behind closed doors. There were a lot of red flags with her (too close too fast at the beginning was already one), but at the time I was so desperate about making friends and had just got out of a pretty bad friend group, so I kinda ignored those red flags and prefered to interpret the anxiety I felt around her as interest rather than actual straight up fear, which it actually was. There was just... an underlying uneasiness that I kept ignoring, and I regret ignoring it like that.

I won't go into detail about what I endured with her but although it only lasted a few months and I've since healed a lot, but some stuff still remains even today. I went into a really bad bout of depression partly due to that, dropped out (the university having been blocked for most of the year didn't help at all), and thus never saw my Japanese friend again. Neither of us has social media and the only way I could contact her was via LINE, but I ended up deleting it too because I had no reason to use it anymore.

Fucking hell do I regret not picking the Japanese girl. I don't think she would've damaged me the way the other one did. I would still be able to eat in public, I wouldn't feel wary of people speaking another language next to me even when it's obvious it has nothing to do with me, I wouldn't feel sick at the sight of certain foods/drinks (that she ordered a lot, cooked or just bought for herself and that I associated with her), I wouldn't hear her abusive words every now and then in my head (they don't affect me like they used to, but they have remained nonetheless), I wouldn't be so scared of traveling with another person, so many things would be different. I'd probably also not feel downright nauseous at the thought of Korean food. I just wish I picked her instead, and I wonder what she's up to now. I guess we'll sort this out in another lifetime. My heart sometimes even aches from that. I just wish I could find her again and that we could be back in contact.

 

[Kolph]

I had a Jewish friend once.

It's a huge "what would have been" considering she was linked to several banks and was a very elite student.

To be honest, I think I would have lost her anyways, due to my rising extremist political beliefs

Tfw no khazar milkers to enjoy...

 

[MorphedSnowman]

There comes a point where we were given opportunities to step up our lives but are under circumstances that alters our decision. What's your "What Could Have Been" in life?

Like an interesting one? While for the most part out of my control, I might have moved to silicon valley when I was like 11, 12 maybe? My father got a job offer there because of a pretty weird coincidences from the past. He didn't go cause he didn't want to start life again and learn english in the end, but we all were thinking about it for a while.

 

[Andy Kaufman]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhLiPNq3UU

 

[s0ren]

Not considering employment opportunities at all when it came to my undergraduate studies. I think choosing your field based on only earnings potential is lame but it literally wasn't a variable I accounted for. I enjoyed doing philosophy/political theory in both undergrad and grad school, but there are things I would have enjoyed equally as much which would offer better prospects. A lot of my friends now work in banking/swe/consulting and so forth, making $200k+ a year. A friend of mine who doesn't even have that desirable of a job working at a major Canadian bank got a $80k end-of-year bonus. I'll have good prospects when I graduate from law school in 2025, but only after another 3 years of school as well as the time I spent between now and getting my MA, mostly spent teaching. This isn't even mentioning the $100k I'll have in debt afterward, whereas I got my bachelors for free. I regret just taking a convoluted way of getting a corporate job over several more years when I could have just taken a commerce offer out of HS and be working in finance now. This also would mean I'd be able to save up money faster and fuck off out of the corporate world to do something else like start a business sooner.

 

[Jaguar Koning]

I studied film at my community college for three years and had a lot of potential. My classmates always liked my work, my professors mentored me because they expected highly of me, I was volunteering at filmmaking camps for high schoolers to help teach them the craft. I wasn't a Kubrick or anything like that, but I had an unpretentious and tongue in cheek style that my peers found unique. I applied to some of the best film schools in the country when my time their was up; I ended up deciding when transferring to study history instead, because my Plan B was to be a history teacher and figured I didn't need a film degree anyway. Those two years at university was definitely the biggest regret of my life. I worked at the on campus studio where I got to make my own show and stuff, but it all felt unsatisfying because I was studying something that I didn't even intend to be my life goal full time. Plus the school I went to was bougie and isolating because I couldn't find a social group to hang out with. I had plenty of friends in community college and high school, but being a middle class kid in goodwill clothes walking around a rich kid school got really isolating. A lot of the students there were rich foreigners and celebrity kids so it was a lot of BMWs, influencer clothes, and top of the line gadgets, meanwhile I'm there, a mopy goth transgirl, with a 15 year old car, a loud ass laptop I bought second hand, and messy hair. It wasn't fun and I dropped out right as the pandemic was looming, and spent a Brian Wilson-esque year laying in bed doing nothing. My passion left, I hated myself, my depression was spiraling out of control.

I really wish I would've gone to a different school and studied what I wanted. I applied to NYU, UCLA, Chapman, all the big guys and could've gone and met other passionate students and made even more art. But no, for some reason I decided to study for a teaching credential at a school I felt out of place at. Biggest mistake of my entire life, easily.

I had almost the same experience, but it wasn't that bad for me, i did apply for public college and i easily passed the admition test, but my parents wanted to me to join a good college, so they sent me to a private college (the best one in my whole country), and when i did arrived, i felt like a stranger, look, i spent most of my life living in a ranch near a small town, even if i got internet from an early age, i wasn't "city folk" at all, and the first time i arrived to the city i felt weird, people in my college looked bourgeois as fuck, with expensive phones, clothes, mercedez bens, etc, spoiled kids from rich parents or european foreigners (my family isn't rich at all, but isn't poor either, just middle class enough to pay for that college), and i arrived at that place with a sombrero and some boots, a thrift shop field jacket (with a small pin of hatsune miku) and a chinese phone, i didn't have a car so i walk from my apartment to the university (because the bus route doesn't stop near my apartment), you know how much did i stand out in that place? I can describe my experience with an adage my country has "Como puta en un convento" (it is translated to "Like a whore in a convent") i felt so out of place, so i was kinda scared to interact with people, it didn't helped that at the time i lost a really close friend, so it was, a really rough experience, it was more than the aesthetics, was the feeling of being in an place in which you felt like an alien, is just weird, and not a good time overall.

But that was when i was 17, now i'm 19 and almost in my last year of college, and you know, with time i learned to not compare with others, you are your own world, they are their own world, and that's more than ok, you don't need to try to fit yourself with people, just be yourself and everything will go fine and dandy, who knows, what if those spoiled kids likes your unique style, you can make the best kind of friends by just being yourself, besides, you are still young, you can still complete your dreams, my mother always says that is not worthy to live with regrets of the past, everyone makes mistakes, but blaming yourself for the ignorance is carrying the wrong cross, idk how is your situation nowadays, but you can always focus on your art, keep practicing, doesn't matter if it is in college or not, you have plenty of time ahead (more time than life as we say here), so don't let yourself down and good luck.

 

[Outer Heaven]

Not considering employment opportunities at all when it came to my undergraduate studies. I think choosing your field based on only earnings potential is lame but it literally wasn't a variable I accounted for. I enjoyed doing philosophy/political theory in both undergrad and grad school, but there are things I would have enjoyed equally as much which would offer better prospects. A lot of my friends now work in banking/swe/consulting and so forth, making $200k+ a year. A friend of mine who doesn't even have that desirable of a job working at a major Canadian bank got a $80k end-of-year bonus. I'll have good prospects when I graduate from law school in 2025, but only after another 3 years of school as well as the time I spent between now and getting my MA, mostly spent teaching. This isn't even mentioning the $100k I'll have in debt afterward, whereas I got my bachelors for free. I regret just taking a convoluted way of getting a corporate job over several more years when I could have just taken a commerce offer out of HS and be working in finance now. This also would mean I'd be able to save up money faster and fuck off out of the corporate world to do something else like start a business sooner.

If it makes you feel any better, the other route is just as frustrating. I'm naturally gifted in the humanities and wanted to study history but I'm hitting my head against a brick wall studying statistics and economics to get a better job later on. I feel like killing myself every time I have to look at a probability distribution or do calculus.

 

[s0ren]

If it makes you feel any better, the other route is just as frustrating. I'm naturally gifted in the humanities and wanted to study history but I'm hitting my head against a brick wall studying statistics and economics to get a better job later on. I feel like killing myself every time I have to look at a probability distribution or do calculus.

Yeah, that's why I tried to stress it being a choice of other things I actually have an interest in or desire to do. I can see why forcing yourself into something more lucrative but that you enjoy less is a struggle. I would have been equally as happy studying CS or commerce at the major Canadian unis where finance and consulting are the main outcomes (Ivey+Rotman+Queen's). Deadass just made my choice without factoring employment outcomes into it.