No Regrets

I’ve been on Facebook for just about a year or so. Over this past year, as I’ve reconnected with old friends from high school, college and graduate school, I’ve often looked at where those people are and compared my own life’s journey to theirs’. It’s hard not to.

Recently, I was “friended” by a former classmate from graduate school who now has those three letters I always pictured following my own last name, Ph.D. I thought seeing that would induce those old “maybe I should go back to school” feelings, but to my surprise it didn’t. As I pondered this, I realized I haven’t experience those feelings in quite a while. For about two years, in fact, ever since I published my first book.

I wrote for a long time before selling my first book, and passed on many things I thought should have been on my life’s journey in order to pursue my dream. Publishing that first book validated the path I’d taken, and made all the sacrifices worth it. This is what I should be doing. When I’m writing, it’s the only time that, when I’m doing it, it doesn’t feel as if I should be doing something else.

If I had entered that Ph.D. program instead of taking those few months off to concentrate on my writing, I possibly never would have finished that first novel. Which eventually turned into a second, then a third, and then a fourth.

Even though it took five manuscripts to make that first sale, I will never regret the path I’ve chosen. And living with no regrets is a great feeling.