Do I get to keep all my current knowledge if I go back and change things? If so, I'd go back to May 5th, 2008. That was the day I decided to stop my through-hike of the Appalachian Trail because I thought I needed to go back home and enroll in college courses for the fall.
In hindsight, college was a huge waste of time that left me depressed and in debt. Thankfully an old Army buddy turned me on to a good job that got my life back on track, but it was a rough few years.
If I had stayed and finished the hike, I could have started that job years earlier, banked a hefty salary, and be that much closer to an earlier retirement now.
There's probably a ton of decisions that I could change, but one of them would be not to join the military and to go to college instead for meteorology. I don't know where I would be now, maybe in debt and stuck, or maybe really enjoying a career in a field I love. Regardless, it would be interesting.
Otherwise, to not accept the proposal from my then boyfriend. Had we broken up, I feel like I would have figured out my sexuality earlier and potentially been happier. But instead, I'm facing down a divorce and restarting my life all over.
Being born to a different family. I've had less than a few friends and wouldn't mind having being one of their younger sisters.
This broke my heart.
I wish we could all pick our families, because I know how real this answer is. Idk how old you may be, but trust me, it gets better the further away you get in both time and space. Sometimes its radically better, other times it seems to be at a snails pace. Either way, it does get better. 🫂
I honestly don't know. There are a lot of things that happened in my life that sucked. Things I did or things I didn't do, and far more that were more or less outside my control. The thing is, is that I keep bumping into really good things in life that probably wouldn't have happened without going through the crap first. A small example is that I worked a crap job, slowly climbed the ladder a bit, worked... okay but it stagnated. We got bought and at the same time I got a job offer elsewhere. Cool--but that job offer turned out to be an absolute nightmare. I jumped ship immediately and came crawling back to my former job.
A lot of pain, a lot of emotional turmoil, wrapped up in ALL of that. But in the end I wound up making more money than ever, and learning new skills that I'm way more passionate about. So a net win. But I did have to go through crap to get here.
This just keeps happening. Over and over, on small scales and big. So as much as I hate the bad stuff, I probably wouldn't change a thing. I like the good stuff too much.
Have you learned nothing from science fiction? You can't go messing with the past. Nothing good can come from destabilizing the timeline.