What would you do differently?

[maillotpois]

Would have been nicer & more patient with my husband and daughter. Luckily they are nicer than me and more patient with me, and late is better than never.

This one for me. To the word.

As for the rest - sure there have been plenty of bad decisions and unhappy times throughout my life. There have also been a lot of things in my life that haven't been great but have been outside my control (mentally ill mother - seems like a somewhat common theme here), but I don't think that falls under a "what I would do differently" assessment. In any event, all of the not so good has (1) made me appreciate the good times interspersed throughout and (2) led me to a place where I am really pretty darned happy right now and I don't know if I would have changed anything because all of it worked to lead me here.

Even the career choices - like several of you I was a pretty unhappy lawyer for, oh about 16 years. I went through two times where I tried to quit and do something completely different (med school and non profit administration). But I stuck with law, and was able to use the years of experience I earned in a particular area of law to work myself out of an unhappy firm partnership and out of the sort of work I was doing into something much more rewarding for me.

Maybe I wouldn't have eaten that chocolate bar last night. I mean, what is it really doing for me today, except helping give me some extra weight to carry uphill in my next double century.