Regret is easy.

I easily fall for those Deathbed Epiphany trains of thought.

• No one wishes they had spent more time at the office.

• You regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.

• If only you'd known that consequences for being true to yourself were so minor.

Here's a link to a nurse revealing the top 5 deathbed regrets.

I am deeply interested -- vested -- in doing it right the first time, because there is only a first time. And by "it" I mean life. And by "life" I don't know what I mean.

Today it occurred to me that no matter what you do or don't do in life, you can have regrets. It's not hard.

That's the problem. Regrets are so easy, so common, that they're meaningless. They're the dust bunnies of convalescence.

Life is big, and if you're careful and fortunate, long. At the end, you are likely to have a major regret. Maybe two. I tried guessing what my major regret would be when writing this post, but how the hell do I know? If I die today, I could name you one. But when I'm 80? That's a half-life away from here. I'll be an entirely different human by then. On a cellular level.

Make your peace with the fact that you will grimly fail at something important in life. Do it as early as possible. Then accept the forgiveness you will need. Accept it ahead of time, and go do the thing you want to do.

Now we are 39

I've long hated the ambush of the passage of time. In high school, I tried to memorize my class schedule every year, period, subject, and teacher, so I would have a solid framework for reference. I wanted nothing to hang loosely in memory, to surprise or escape attention.

I don't think I retained it fully past college, but even in my early 20s, I would occasionally give it another turn, just to try to rebuild the frame. I haven't tried it in a while. Wonder if I can still pull it up?

Period	Subject	Teacher
1	Latin	??
2	P.E.	Brown
3	Band	Hood/Webb
4	English	Pearson
5	Earth Science	Coe
6	Geometry	Martin

Freshman year is enough to prove a point, I think. Not bad for a few minutes of thought and a quick refresher on HTML tables.
This is relevant because I recently turned 39. And it reminded me of when I turned 29.

At 29, I was wary of letting 30 sneak up on me. I refused to hit that milestone and reel from unexpected realization. So I spent the entire year pretending I was 30. I practiced with thoughts of deferred ambition and mortality.

It worked flawlessly. One year later, I passed the three-decade mark brow unfurrowed by existential consequence.

I was proud of my foresight and small success. Some time later though, it occurred to me that the price for my practice was a year of my life. Essentially, I had two 30s and no 29s -- I hadn't bothered to remember my class schedule for the last year of my 20s.
This is relevant because, as you may recall, I recently turned 39. And this time I've decided to let my 9er be a 9er. A time to look back and forward, but reside only in the time I have.

I am loathe to announce projects here, because most of them never happen. Nonetheless, the limb I shimmy onto now is a project for the remainder of my fast-vanishing 30s: reflection, anticipation, and appreciation for where I am. And as well as I am able, I'll post it here at QT.

It is, as I often say these days, a good time to be me. I hope to be able to talk about why that's true.