Thinking back on my childhood, there are a lot of things I wish I had have done differently. Not because my childhood was horrible, but just because I could have done so much more.
I wish I had have read more books. I do enjoy reading, but I don’t do it nearly as much as I should. (Especially considering that I am going into an English program in university next year.) I wish that I would have read more when I was younger and had more time. I partially want this just so that I would be faster at reading now and be into the habit of reading, but it’s also more than that. There are so many adventures and experiences that I could have had as a kid that would have inspired me and shaped me that I will never be able to appreciate the same now that I am older and don’t perceive them the same.
I wish that I had have gone outside and explored more. I grew up in kind of a dumb location. Our yard was just a big open field with literally no trees and the only forest nearby was tiny and too far away to be allowed to go alone. Sure, it was kind of fun playing in our back yard, but I wish that I had some sort of a forest bordering our lot or something. The house we live in now has a great forest, but unfortunately it’s really mucky and I am a bit old to enjoy running around pretending now. I think back to all the free time I had and all the grand adventures I could have gone on with my brother. Of course, my mother wouldn’t let me go too far away anyways, but I can dream can’t I?
I wish that I would have kept with writing all throughout my childhood until my teen years. When I was in elementary school, I loved making up stories. All through the primary grades, I would make little stories in class and I would love to share them. Looking back, I guess I was a pretty creative kid. I kept up with writing cute little stories all the way through until high school, mostly through school assignments. Two things happened when high school came around. 1. Creative writing was a very small part of English class so I didn’t have much outside motivation to write. 2. I started wasting a lot more time on things such as Facebook, Minecraft and Wii games. I started becoming a brainless consumer and not a creator like I should be. I’m not saying that Wii or Minecraft are bad things, in fact they represent the light side of the gaming industry, but in the way that I used them, they kept me from spending time creating and developing my talents. For most of grade 10 and 11 I was a Minecraft zombie. I had tonnes of fun and created kingdoms with my friends, but something was still missing. I tried starting up writing again a couple times, but had little patience for it and so I gave up quickly again. It wasn’t again until this year that I have really gotten back into writing because of the novel that I am writing now for my “Senior Project” at school. I feel I would be a lot better at writing if I kept at it though, and for that I wish that I hadn’t have wasted so much valuable free time that I will never get back.
While I can wish all I want, I can never really change what’s happened in the past. All I really can do is learn from the past and live the future better. I suppose that even if I could change the past, I probably wouldn’t in the end because what I have done in the past makes me who I am today. Maybe, without those past experiences, I would be a person that this version of me would be appalled at. Maybe it would be better, but who knows? We can’t worry about it too much, just live on and work towards a better future for ourselves.
