Get medicated earlier. Throw out those awful Ayn Rand books. Start my favorite hobby earlier so I can have another few decades of it (there’s a good place to do so relatively nearby). Don’t send that email. Go back to Germany. Don’t let her follow me. Set myself up financially, maybe well enough to make a difference. Two years under a religious roof in a small town would be awful, so find peers that make it a little less so.

Life is not a straight path. There have been many times when something happened because things were just so. I used to lament all the imaginary paths I didn’t take; I’d have a hell of a ghost for the real one. I don’t think I could recreate my life in any meaningful way. Trying to remake decisions that I think of as mistakes just wouldn’t work. I know things about myself that might make things easier or harder. I’d get to make a bunch of new mistakes, that’s for sure. Planning anything major just seems impossible.