Regret

Of all the things in this pandemic, the hardest for me has been the surge of regrets. I have so much time to sit with my thoughts of what might have been. I had so many things going for me and I was booked on more shows in the month of March than ever before. I was scheduled to be on the local news to promote a show the week everything shut down. I had achieved my goal of hosting 3 weekly shows. Then it all dropped to zero and 2020 changed. All my plans and ambitions for the year, gone. But today I am letting go of these and moving forward. I strongly believe that awareness of regrets is crucial to success — solely dwelling on them does no good. Using them to transcend my current situation is everything.

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.” – Kurt Vonnegut.

I love regrets. Regrets are important. Regret is related to a perceived opportunity. This is so important because a regret is something that I felt I could have done but I chose not to. So going forward I take that regret and use it to guide my goal setting. So all my regrets last year become goals this year. This system has made me reach higher levels faster. I do not regret things I never thought I could do in the first place. Like I don’t regret not winning the lottery, maybe I regret not buying a lottery ticket. That is something within my immediate control while the actual winning is not. Regrets are the shots I wish I took. I only regret the sets I didn’t do.

I think about this time, what we are all going through with the pandemic. What we all have missed out in this, what should have been in 2020. For me what has been taken is live standup comedy in its traditional sense. Live standup is something I must let go of. I cannot do it right now and I have accepted that. So what am I to do with this time?

Today I focus my regret. I zoom forward, into the future when this is all over, and what are my regrets? A year from now when Bjorn is looking back at this time, what are my biggest regrets? I can only regret the things that were in my immediate control. This is an opportunity for me to take time on things I did not make time for when I was grinding at standup comedy every night of the week. This reframing of the current situation gives me comfort, it gives me control again. I cannot control many things in the pandemic but what I can control is myself and how I react to it. I was having a conversation with a close friend and fellow comedian. We spoke about surfing. How the art of surfing is not to control the wave but to ride it. It's submitting to nature yet seizing the opportunity of the wave given. The surfer is not in control of the wave but is in control of what he does with what is given.

The best gift I ever received, I did not understand at the time. I appreciated it more and more as time went on. Good gifts are important to me, to look back and appreciate the really good ones or the less obvious ones.  The best gift I ever got was from my step mom on Christmas when I was in middle school. The gift was a Peet brand boot dryer. I was so disappointed when I opened it and I still have it to this day, almost 20 years later. I still use it. I grew up skiing and snowboarding — wet boots are the worst. I think my mood could be directly correlated with the dampness of my feet. As a teenager when I opened it like what the hell is this? But if I would have known that I would still need/use it living in the pacific northwest I might have written a better thank you note if I did at all. So what is the unseen gift in this situation? What am I getting that I need to learn to appreciate now? TIME.

When I zoom forward and think what future Bjorn will regret with this time given, it would be that I did not use this time to learn something new. That I did not pivot into something new with comedy. So that is exactly what I am doing. The things I have been working on are podcasting, learning to play piano, writing, and learning to drive a motorcycle. I have been given this gift of time to work at these things without the full time distraction that is live standup comedy. Who knows maybe my life will go another direction, but I know that I will do live standup again. 

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Thank you for reading, You’re doing great. 

Bjorn RG.