It’s 3am and you are up, thinking. I’ve switched careers too many times. I chose the wrong track. I stayed too long at my companies. I should have stayed at that team, or followed that manager.
It’s inevitable to analyze all the decisions you made that branched life and put you where you are. All these branches represent an opportunity into a complete different life that our brain is happy to fantasize about. Escape.
Have you ever thought how your life would be if you were rich? Every kid has done that, some of us still do. The joy of driving a sports car? The peacefulness of owning a large country property? It’s hard to spot the trap, but that’s the same exercise. Only now you are dwelling over a job you didn’t take, or a field you didn’t go into.
What if my last company hadn’t went bankrupt? Or that great manager hadn’t quit? Some of those decisions weren’t even yours to make and still, it’s material to create parallel universes. That’s how insidious the whole project is.
The problem of course is not all the decisions you made in the past, but really that you find yourself revisiting them. Why is it? There’s only the present, and something in it is not right, making you reach into the past.
My work is boring, meaningless. My peers are being paid more. Stay there and resist the urge to root cause it for a bit. Do you feel how much more real it is? It’s easier to blame your past self and a lot harder to carry the weight of full agency.
There’s probably no simple advice to what ails you. Just know the weight is yours to carry. Or drop, or do whatever you want to do with it. It’s all but impossible to maximize a lifetime of decisions, so don’t forgive yourself but understand there’s nothing to be forgiven. Also understand that it’s entirely possible in the future you’ll be looking back at this branching moment. This is all too human. So wish your future self clarity and be present for what needs your attention.