Career path regret: You're Not the Only One

I look out my window most afternoons, around 2:45 when the light hits just right, at the little pottery studio across the street. …

I'm looking at these papers, these introductory biology papers, every single day, every day, the same predictable misunderstandings of mitosis and meiosis, and my fingers ache. …

He’d come home smelling of sawdust and sweat. …

not even dread exactly more like… a profound sense of cognitive dissonance. …

I'm almost 60, and I’ve spent most of my life trying to make a living, you know? …

And this one kid, bless his heart, he’s up there, silent lecture hall, you can hear a pin drop, and he totally loses his train of thought. …

Anyone else ever find themselves grading some… *very* basic freshman biology papers — like, the kind that barely pass the rubric for "identifies major organelles"— and just feel this profound…… …

i remembered culinary school. …

) And it’s 2 AM and I’m just staring at a poorly drawn Punnett square and all I can think about is… sawdust. …

It’s more of a… a lingering ache, maybe. …

sometimes you're studying for an econometrics final which i have no business even attempting at my age let's be real and you find some old ephemera tucked into a textbook and it just STOPS you in… …

i don't know if this counts but sometimes at night i look at my ancient dirt samples in the lab and wonder if anyone outside of like five other people in the world will ever care about this when i'm… …

A contract with a real publishing house. …

I'm 78 now, staring out at my rhododendrons, the azaleas a vibrant shock against the gray stone, and sometimes I feel this somatic ache, a phantom limb almost, for a life I never lived. …

Like, I'm a junior architect, which is a HUGE deal for me after, well, a long time away from the drawing board. …

I'm staring at that fucking pottery studio across the street again, probably for the tenth time today. …

I’m sitting out here, watching the azaleas, and it’s a good display this year—the red ones, almost vermilion. …

I was in this quarterly review meeting, right? …

Someone — a someone I used to be, a real goddamn square — decided years ago that “this thing,” this whole writing schtick, was it. …

Like, you're looking at all the data points — the tenure track, the nice suburban house, the kids who *probably* won't need braces — and it all indicates success, but your internal instrument panel… …