Regrets are tough things to live with because they sting while they’re happening, burn when they’re swallowed, and they leave scars that no high-end BB cream can mask. Me? Oh, I’ve got a mess of regrets and they run the gamut from the utterly superficial to the psychologically damaging and can be empirically measured on a scale of zero to forever. Let’s see: I regret that time I gave myself a bikini wax and all the years I roasted in the summer sun covered from head to toe with baby oil. I regret the freckles I could have avoided and the overuse of filters to mask them in pictures. I regret all the nights I was too worried about liking my outfit to concern myself with making memories that were not colored by the sepia tone of body dysmorphic disorder. I regret not spending more time with people I love and I regret the years I lived by the doctrine, “In the grand scheme of my life, this will not matter,” because I was often … Continue reading →

As long as we’re on the subject (since I just brought it up), here are a few things I don’t miss in the slightest:

• Those incessant blizzards that rocked the east coast last winter. Yes, I realize that I might have just committed the weather equivalent of shouting, “Looks like a no-hitter!” during the ninth inning of a baseball game right before the batter smashes a grand slam homerun straight into the outfield bleachers, but should a month of continuous snowfall accompanied by ice thudding from the sky suddenly commence, please blame Mother Nature, not me. • Thinking that I have to say yes to everything I’m asked to do at work. There were those early years when I tutored for the SAT and helped students write college essays and ran classes designed to get kids a better score on the Regents exam. I was even suckered into being the advisor for the Trivia Team my first few years, an act that mandated that I accompany kids who loved shit like physics and trigonometry … Continue reading →