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From 2000 to 2005 I worked for a school district. The job was too much for one person, I was an OT and had a caseload of 70 kids I had to see once a week, in 9 different schools. It was insane and I was completely overwhelmed and unhappy, and I felt like I couldn't do a really good job because I was so rushed. I begged for help but never got it, and I felt like my boss threw me under the bus when I couldn't get things done in a timely way (evaluating new kids, etc) So I quit, and went back to nursing homes (I really always liked working with the elderly better than kids). The next year, they hired 2 full time people to replace me, which really made me mad. Why couldn't they do that when I was there?
In any case, I am now almost 59 years old. It dawned on me a few months ago that if I had stayed at the school district, I would have only 4 years to go and I would have a full pension. Instead, I have an IRA, but don't have anywhere close to enough to retire, nor will I by the time I'm 65. That's IF I can still work. I already had one back surgery in 2016, and nursing home work is physically demanding. I have arthritis in my spine, my feet and my thumbs.
I feel like I will have to work till I fall apart, and even then I'll be in trouble. When I go to Rite Aid or Walmart and see someone elderly working, I feel like I'm looking at my future.
I know I'm not as bad off as some. I do have some savings and the IRA, I have an awesome fiance (he too though will not be able to work his very physical job much longer, and most of his SS check will go to his ex as he has lifetime alimony) and I have a family who loves me. No matter what, I won't be living in the street eating cat food, and I am grateful for that.
But I am obsessed with what "could have been". I'd be able to enjoy my old age, with probably $3,000 a month on top of SS, and health care to boot. I feel like I was a complete idiot for ever leaving the school, and I can't stop thinking about it. I can't forgive myself. I feel so stupid. I wish desperately I could go back in time and make a different choice. I am jealous of friends who have a pension and don't have to worry about losing their home in old age (I still have many years on my mortgage).
I lie awake at night thinking about what a stupid decision it was and can't turn my brain off. I feel like I threw away a winning lottery ticket.
Does anyone have any experience with deep regret and how did you get past it?
Last edited by PJSaturn; 08-09-2021 at 07:09 PM..
Reason: Merged 2 threads on same topic.
Oh you're singing my song. I have so many regrets I can't count them all. But I haven't come out the other side, so I don't know what I can say other than you're not alone. I regret marrying my first wife, then I regret ruining the marriage (or feeling like I did), not having kids, being bad in relationships, and on and on and on. It never ends. I also worry about dumb financial decisions and finance is what I do for a living! So I hear ya. I might be able to retire at 62, but a lot has to go right with the markets and I have to continue to save 30+% of my salary to get there. Its not all my fault. The recession and divorce at the same time destroyed me financially and emotionally. People saw that. Potential employers could see it. I didn't work a full year for several years. I also envy my peers who seemingly have this perfect life (on the outside) money in the bank, kids, a family, etc. and here I sit alone at 52 with some money, but thats it. Its a lonely existence. You have your fiance and and a family, so try (I know its hard) to not dwell on the future and the past. My past major mistake (causing my divorce) is roughly 12-13 years ago and I'm still not over it, so I can't preach to you. We both would be better off living in the present. Meditation can help with that but it takes a while. There's no easy fix, trust me. I've tried it all. I'm still trying...
15 years ago is a bit late to have regrets. What have you done since?
Like I said, I've been working in nursing homes. I only recently started having regrets when it dawned on me how close I would be right now to getting a pension. I really never thought about it in all these years until that dawned on me. At the time I quit, retirement seemed like such a long way off it wasn't even a consideration.
Oh you're singing my song. I have so many regrets I can't count them all. But I haven't come out the other side, so I don't know what I can say other than you're not alone. I regret marrying my first wife, then I regret ruining the marriage (or feeling like I did), not having kids, being bad in relationships, and on and on and on. It never ends. I also worry about dumb financial decisions and finance is what I do for a living! So I hear ya. I might be able to retire at 62, but a lot has to go right with the markets and I have to continue to save 30+% of my salary to get there. Its not all my fault. The recession and divorce at the same time destroyed me financially and emotionally. People saw that. Potential employers could see it. I didn't work a full year for several years. I also envy my peers who seemingly have this perfect life (on the outside) money in the bank, kids, a family, etc. and here I sit alone at 52 with some money, but thats it. Its a lonely existence. You have your fiance and and a family, so try (I know its hard) to not dwell on the future and the past. My past major mistake (causing my divorce) is roughly 12-13 years ago and I'm still not over it, so I can't preach to you. We both would be better off living in the present. Meditation can help with that but it takes a while. There's no easy fix, trust me. I've tried it all. I'm still trying...
Thanks for commiserating! Like I said, I know I don't have much to complain about in comparison to people who are standing in food bank lines or people who have children with cancer or people who have MS or any number of things. It's the forgiving myself part I am having such a hard time with.
I have been trying meditation, but only 6 minutes a day so far. I know myself enough to know that if I try to make it 20 minutes I will keep saying "well, I'll skip today because it's just too busy". But with 6 minutes (I don't know why I chose that random number) I've been able to at least be consistent. I've also been starting my day with a verbal gratitude list I say to myself in the shower.
I think a lot of it is fear and uncertainty about what my future holds, while I could have had peace of mind had I made a different decision. I'm an anxious person anyway who truthfully has worried much of my life away. The realization that the time to pay off debt and save is so very limited now at my age makes me worry a lot about what is to come. It always seemed I had plenty of time. I know that's stupid. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, lol, and would have worried for nothing. Of course a lot of it comes late at night when I try to sleep. I've had to fall asleep in front of TV in order to sleep. If I try to turn the TV off and go to bed, that's when my mind starts racing and all these thoughts come up, and of course lots of self-flagellation.
Thanks for commiserating! Like I said, I know I don't have much to complain about in comparison to people who are standing in food bank lines or people who have children with cancer or people who have MS or any number of things. It's the forgiving myself part I am having such a hard time with.
I have been trying meditation, but only 6 minutes a day so far. I know myself enough to know that if I try to make it 20 minutes I will keep saying "well, I'll skip today because it's just too busy". But with 6 minutes (I don't know why I chose that random number) I've been able to at least be consistent. I've also been starting my day with a verbal gratitude list I say to myself in the shower.
I think a lot of it is fear and uncertainty about what my future holds, while I could have had peace of mind had I made a different decision. I'm an anxious person anyway who truthfully has worried much of my life away. The realization that the time to pay off debt and save is so very limited now at my age makes me worry a lot about what is to come. It always seemed I had plenty of time. I know that's stupid. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, lol, and would have worried for nothing. Of course a lot of it comes late at night when I try to sleep. I've had to fall asleep in front of TV in order to sleep. If I try to turn the TV off and go to bed, that's when my mind starts racing and all these thoughts come up, and of course lots of self-flagellation.
I get it. Look up the 10% Happier app (and the book by the same name, 10% Happier, is fantastic). Its a small investment, but worth it. Hundreds of guided meditations on anything and everything, including sleep meditations. They do work once you try a few times. I also listen to the podcast, which is really good. Dan Harris is just great at introducing it, and he's analytical like I am. Can't say enough about him.
I learned to worry from my mother, and I've followed the same path as you. There have been times where I've been able to not worry, but only when I don't have too much time alone. Therefore, the last decade has been rough for me. I keep trying with exercise, not drinking too much, meditation, plenty of sleep (with sleep meds), etc.
What if you'd kept the school job, never gotten the second person to help you, married the superintendent who beat you, was driving to work one day and got creamed by a semi and died?
What if ?
We change one major thing in life, we change often the entire trajectory. Anything could have happened.
I think you have concerns about funding your retirement. So what can you do to change that? Can you change some investments to be a little riskier but higher rewards? Can you branch out and learn some new investments? Can you start a side job, even a hobby such as painting or sewing, that would supply more income? Marry a multi-millionaire? Write a book? Some ideas may be far out there, or not in your interests, such as marrying the millionaire, but expanding the fantasies also expands the mind to the realistic possibilities.
But you and your fiance could have a happy life....much better than marrying the super and getting hit by the semi, even if nothing changes. How do we measure quality of life?
As for my regrets...well...there's plenty, like Draper, too many to count. Anywhere along the line I could have changed the trajectory, but what if...(those stinky what ifs) what if it had ended worse?
I worry too. Not when I lay down to sleep, that I do like a baby. I awaken early with worry, sometimes too early.
We all have regrets somewhere along the way. But one thing I've done is look at those key decisions and analyze them rationally using the information I had available at the time. Not through 20/20 hindsight, but put my mind back into the same situation using only what I knew then. I've found that given what I knew at the time, I wouldn't have changed a thing along my path.
That's the thing. We make decisions based only on what we know. It's easy to look backward and say "if I'd known A, then I would have done C instead of B." But you didn't know A.
Wow, where to start? Obsessing over anything is not going to do you any good. Lying awake and waking early are signs of anxiety, not regret. The things you regret, and we all have them, plenty of them, are just convenient things to agonize over when you get in that frame of mind.
OP, I'm not sure your health would have held up under that job for all these years - and 4 more to go. Anything can go wrong with a relationship, a job, a pension, a plan. Look at how the world has changed this last year in ways that will never be undone. Anxiety and uncertainty are rampant and all the regretting and obsessing are ways to blame yourself for being in a situation you likely don't have as much control over as you think.
Even if we're all correct and we made bad choices and ruined our lives, we can't go back and change it. We can only go forward. I don't have much money, or retirement money, and some days I think OMG, retirement will mean sitting in the house with my husband buried in his computer and I'm going to have to find something to do or I'll go crazy. So that's my plan, such as it is: find things to do, find people to do things with, move forward and see what comes of the decisions I make in the future.
I don't have any family, either, so will probably be one of those old ladies working in a store for something to do. Not what I had in mind, but I can think of worse things.
Thanks for commiserating! Like I said, I know I don't have much to complain about in comparison to people who are standing in food bank lines or people who have children with cancer or people who have MS or any number of things. It's the forgiving myself part I am having such a hard time with.
I have been trying meditation, but only 6 minutes a day so far. I know myself enough to know that if I try to make it 20 minutes I will keep saying "well, I'll skip today because it's just too busy". But with 6 minutes (I don't know why I chose that random number) I've been able to at least be consistent. I've also been starting my day with a verbal gratitude list I say to myself in the shower.
I think a lot of it is fear and uncertainty about what my future holds, while I could have had peace of mind had I made a different decision. I'm an anxious person anyway who truthfully has worried much of my life away. The realization that the time to pay off debt and save is so very limited now at my age makes me worry a lot about what is to come. It always seemed I had plenty of time. I know that's stupid. I might get hit by a bus tomorrow, lol, and would have worried for nothing. Of course a lot of it comes late at night when I try to sleep. I've had to fall asleep in front of TV in order to sleep. If I try to turn the TV off and go to bed, that's when my mind starts racing and all these thoughts come up, and of course lots of self-flagellation.
There are a couple of ways I handle regret. Fear is the one feeling I had to deal with. An author was practical about fear. The idea is that many people confuse worry with fear. Fear it's a temporary feeling reserved for life or death situations. Worry is longer lasting. It occurs when we don't do something that is within our control. It also occurs when we try to control something that is out of our control.
As far as regret, he had practical advice for that as well. If you are alive today, whatever decisions you made in the past were the right steps. Avoid using those decisions against yourself.
If I had made the same decisions as you, what advice would you give me? (BTW, I left a job where I was being groomed to be the next corporate manager. I look back and wonder where I would be if I had stayed.)
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