The future to the past

I came from my future back into my past today when Mathgirl and her husband gave me a ride back from New York to Crimson City and we stopped in N'Haven (how the Metro North guys pronounce it) for lunch. We walked around campus a bit, and stopped into my old residential college, which was recently renovated as part of a bazillion dollar renovation campaign begun just after I graduated 10 years ago.

It looked fantastic, and we just happened to meet the "new" master of the college (who actually became the master in 2000 -- I just didn't know, so she's new to me). She talked to us a bit about the renovations and the discussions about the possibility of two new residential colleges.

I walked through the sleek marble foyer and marveled over Maya's Room, the art space (for which I planned a show one year and for which I served as treasurer for two years) that used to be on the top floor of the dining hall building and is now a proper first floor gallery space. I pointed a dozen times to various rooms and details and repeated, "That's new!" I remembered the time three of my closest friends and I drank wine -- something so new and so grown-up to us -- at the marble chessboard in the courtyard, and one of us accidentally tipped the half-empty bottle over, where it shattered on the ground.

Nostalgia washed over me. Not for the actual days of college, which were so trying and so challenging in many ways, but for the unfettered promise of those days, when I could have wandered down a thousand different paths and become a thousand different people.

I chose the past that is now mine, and this is the path I chose -- a meandering, questing, seeking path of multiple cities and jobs that now leads, in a week's time, to life as a corporate lawyer in New York. As my friends settle more deeply into the roles they have chosen (in the words of Fearless T, actualize what they were learning and training for in their twenties), I wonder, did I choose right? What if I had had the confidence to pursue the writing jobs right after school? What if I had decided to go into academia, letting my enthusiasm lead me, disregarding the doubts about my commitment or my ability?

There's no point in wondering, because you can't change what was.

But it's sad to think about what could have been, because what is today holds no joy for me.

So I wonder. And -- in a departure from my usual outlook -- I regret.