Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.

Saw the Rent movie over the holiday weekend. With my entire family. Grandmother included. Everyone but my brother wanted to see it, and he agreed he could sit through it, so we figured what the hell. Family outing. The prospect of which filled me with a certain amount of nostalgia, as sleeping out on the street with friends for twenty-dollar Rent tickets was one of the very first defining experiences of my move to NYC ten years ago.

And I wanted to love the movie. Really, I did. But I didn’t. Oh well. C’est la vie.

The overall “message” (no day but today, carpe diem, live in the moment, blah blah blah) was not lost on me, though. No secret that I’ve kind of been struggling with that lately.

In the car afterwards, my grandmother looked at me and asked, “P/O, you don’t sing anymore, do you?”

See, most of the people in my life today would probably be surprised to learn that I used to be somewhat of a musician. I played instruments, sang, and generally lived most of my youth as a band and chorus geek. And yet, for the past decade, there’s been no trace of any of that in my life. And honestly, I don’t even think about that fact.

Story of my life, actually. Looking back, much of my personal history can be seen as a series of periods, a series of one-eighties, rather than a clear or tangible progression. I’ve often pursued things (and believe me, when I pursued something, I pursued it, ruthlessly and ceaselessly, earning me the nickname “one track” at a very young age) only to burn them out and drop them for something else abruptly down the line.

So when my grandmother asked, “P/O, you don’t sing anymore, do you,” it caught me off guard.

“Nope,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Never really thought about it.”

“It’s a shame. You were so talented.” (Full disclosure: my grandmother’s assessment of my talent should always be taken with a grain of salt. She also insists I should have been a model. And a writer. And god knows what else.)

And for a moment, I felt a twinge of regret at having abandoned something that I was good at, that used to give me a certain amount of pleasure. And one thing about me is that I’ve always said I regret nothing. That I’ve never seen the point of regret or dwelling on the past. I’ve never hesitated to make choices or enact change, knowing that change only brings the possibility of more previously unforeseen change and opportunity.

And yet, here I was, starting to think about my past and some of the choices I’ve made that maybe, just maybe, could have been made better. Things I’ve done that maybe could have (should have?) been done differently. Fuck.

She persisted, “But couldn’t you find some way of still doing it?”

And I thought about it and said, “I don’t know. I’m really not interested.”

And that’s just it. I’m really not interested. I’m not interested in revisiting those things that, for whatever reason, have been packed up and put away. I may not know exactly how I got here, or if this is ultimately where I want to be, but I’m here now and all I can do is strive to remain true to who I am here and now. I see that, without realizing it, I’ve actually been wasting an obscene amount of time and energy on regret lately. And that’s got to stop. So no more of that. I’ve wallowed long enough, and it’s time to take this bull once again by the horns.