If This Is It...

Well, lets all hold our breaths.  The Mayans said the world was going to end on December 21st, 2012.  I cannot believe I didn't get a day off from work for this!  After this, nothingness.  A world without good, evil and whatever type of awful super evil "Despiser of Obama" is.

Of course, tomorrow will happen, as will the next day.  I'm sure of it...but what if I'm not? Well, better to be safe than sorry.  Here are some things I do and don't regret from my prior 28 years on earth, if my final, waning hours are here.

Without adieu...

I regret never getting to see the Cubs win the World Series.  I always wanted that day when over a hundred years of curses and terrible teams were exorcised those demons from Wrigley Field.  People lived their entire lives and died without getting to see the Cubs win a World Series.  This whole Mayan thing is going to rain on my ability, too.

I will never regret being a Cubs fan.

I regret the night that the truck stop on Route 30 closed.  In a scene of drunken ridiculousness, Dakota and I grabbed the corner table and made a run for the door, to the cheers of the people in the building.  We got the table through the doors and into my brother's waiting truck.

I don't regret that. I regret that they only ID'ed my brother and Plainfield cops made him come back and return the table back to where he found it.

I regret thinking that high powered rifles were a fun and cool thing when I was younger.

I don't regret evolving as a person to realize how bad they truly are.

I regret never jumping out of an airplane.

I don't regret knowing how to dance Gangnam Style.

I regret never following my reckless dreams when I was younger to throw it all away and go to Hollywood and try to make it as a writer, or failing that, porn star.

I regret not taking better care of my knees.  My left one is shot.  I'm 28 but I have the body appendages of an 80-year-old rodeo clown.  They've been beaten up. Remember when you were young and you would be wrestling with your siblings or friends and your parents would tell you to stop jumping off the couch because you were going to ruin your knees?  Turns out they were right.

I regret not inventing a time machine to go back in time and tell young me to stop ruining my knees.  Oh, and to start eating healthy then, because it gets a lot harder as you get older.  Oh, and go back to when I was 14 and tell me from then that High School would only be hard because I made it hard on myself. 

I don't regret knowing that the entire reason I ever wanted to write in the first place was because, in English 101 at JJC many, many years ago, I wrote some non-fiction thing in a rush, on a deadline. 

When it came back to me, the teacher wrote: "Grammatically this paper is a piece of s***, but creativity is the god I live under, and I thank you. A+"

I regret not remembering that teacher's name.

I regret getting thrown out of JJC just as I was figuring school out and what I wanted to do with my life.

I do not regret why I was thrown out(a story for another day...if there is another day).

I do not regret the partying and the times I've had.  I've always partied as if there wouldn't be a tomorrow.  Nobody made great memories sitting at home on a Saturday night.

I don't regret the friends I've accumulated in life.

I do regret the friends I've lost.

I regret never getting to see Johnny Cash live in concert.

I don't regret never getting to see Nickelback in concert.

I regret never playing in the World Series of Poker.

I don't regrets the night I spent in that smoky card room.  Devin's Hall of Fame was kind of the last hideout in Plainfield.  Are you confused?  Exactly. It was a poker room at night.  Where a lot of us got educations on the harsh realities of life.  Peaks and valleys.  You felt like a king when you were playing well, you felt like trash if you left broke.  It crossed every major economic and social line.  Cops and business owners played poker with creeps and college students.  High lifes and lowlifes.  But they also became great friends and there isn't a day that goes by when I'm not sad those days are over.

Again, a great story for another day...

I regret not having the courage to say screw it and go on stage and give stand up comedy a try.  I always wanted to try, just to see if I could.

I regret not spending more time in New York.  It's a city as a living, breathing organism.  It just keeps happening.  Life will always go on in New York, even if people are wiped off of it. That is just the kind of place it is.

I don't regret hating snow. Always have.  Always will.  I hate you, snow.  I hope you know that.  I'm waving my fist at you right now!

I regret not going to Australia.

I don't regret not going to Canada.

I regret having never visited Dexter, Iowa. (Another story coming soon)

And finally, I don't regret a single word i've said while writing for the Patch.  If this is my last post before we are all cast into the fire and the flames, let it be known that I stand my words.  That's why I post under my own name.

It takes no courage to be anonymous.  The majority of commenters for the Patch are nothing more than cowards who are too scared to attach their names to their hateful words.  They try to push people around through a computer screen, even though they'd be too gutless to in real life.

So that's why, as long as days keep happening, I'll keep writing what I think should be written.  Keep it real and shine on you crazy diamonds.