I’m not big on regrets, but I used to occasionally [tag]regret[/tag] never going for what I considered a [tag]Dream Job[/tag]. After grad school, I saw it open up a few times. It never opened up at a good time at what I considered an opportune time. Now and again I would wonder if that was really true or if through inaction I’d blown an interesting opportunity.

I was thinking about this when I read the NY Times piece, “The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret With a Dash of Bitters.”

Over the past decade and a half, psychologists have studied how regrets — large and small, recent and distant — affect people’s mental well-being. They have shown, convincingly though not surprisingly, that ruminating on paths not taken is an emotionally corrosive exercise. The common wisdom about regret — that what hurts the most is not what you did but what you didn’t do — also appears to be true, at least in the long run.

I jettisoned the last pangs of regret over the “lost” Magic Job after not only meeting a few people who worked at the institution in question, but meeting two people who actually held the Magic Job. The Magic Job, it turns out, was the job from hell. In the place from hell. Not just your run-of-the-mill [tag]hell[/tag], either. We’re talking about a fiery hell dimension filled with old-school muzak versions of “Feliz Navidad” and lots and lots of branding irons, punctuated by constant disemboweling and strangulation with one’s own [tag]entrails[/tag].

Regrets are a waste of energy. Don’t have regrets.