The Regrets on the Cutting Room Floor

MIS Band 1996-1997

The VEDA video way very hard to make today. I talked about something I did that I talk about very rarely, if ever. I did a very bad thing, and I regret it each and every day. I wish there were some way to set it right, but I don't know that there is. I can't undo it, and asking for forgiveness would be more for me than for them. I think the best I could do is confess my act and my regret at having committed it. I hope that I don't live to regret being honest about one of my biggest regrets. That would be the ultimate in irony.

Honestly, the video could have gone on for an hour or more if I had talked about more than one of the regrets that haunt me. Maybe I'll make a series when VEDA is over, but for now I will just give you one more.

Inaction.

I feel quite a bit like Hamlet in this regard. I tend to not act on things, or I won't act until it is too late. Is this a result of fear, anxiety, depression, or just laziness? I don't really know. I know that I have let friendships fall by the wayside because I was too much of a coward to make a simple phone call. I have generally been a lousy friend. I never applied to Rochester University, despite my nearly guaranteed admission. I don't say "thank you" as often as I should. I forget to make the important people in my life feel  their worth. I take people, places, and things for granted. I don't speak up and speak out against injustice when I see or hear it as often as I should. I just let things happen. I let things go. I let things slide until it's too late to fix anything at all. I was going to go on about all of this and more in my video, but I feel that I erred on the side of good sense in this case. Still, these are the things I think about.

Currently, I am struggling to revise some short stories and poetry before the deadline for a contest. If I had just revised said pieces when they were first critiqued, I wouldn't be struggling now. But I didn't act. I never act. I need to act more.

I need to do something, even if it's wrong.