What's something you wish you did/didn't do when you were a child, but wouldn't change you much even if that was the case?
Obviously, stuffs like buying Bitcoins, making a certain major discovery are off.
Mine would be not slacking in learning Chinese because I never though I would be a weeb. Now I need to re-learn tons of Kanji.
I wish I spent more time on music/instruments. Probably wouldn't have changed much in major ways, but I'd have more hobbies rn. It's a struggle to learn when I have so little time
It definitely could have changed things signicantly. There's a lot of research out there for correlations between learning music instruments at a young age and brain development. Your life could have gone in a completely different direction as a result of learning an instrument.
One of best moves I made was joining the US Army. The Army paid off my student loans and I got to live in Germany.
I do wish I had spent more time learning about the different MOS. That is the job you have in the Army.
I should have been an 88K. That is a watercraft operator. That way I could have the loan repayment and been a sailor.
I really wanted to join the Navy , but that branch did not repay student loans.
I wish I complained about how narrow my shoes always were but now my pinky toes are mangled
Huh, that reminds me of something similar. My militray boot is a bit too big, but it didn't stop me from running, and it just feels a bit floppy like a flip flop. I should have complained back then, but I didn't, and I mildly regretted it.
Note that this happened after I grew up, of course. Conscripting a child is usually frowned upon.
I wish I didn't slack off on math. Now that I'm doing gamedev I've had to re-learn a lot of it.
Same goes for English, actually. Not my native language
Retain my knowledge of the (west) Frysian language. At one point I spoke it fairly well, but I can only understand it now and not speak or write it. It wouldn't really have helped me in any way, but I guess it would've given me a bit more of a regional identity and it would be nice to preserve the language.
Mine would be not slacking in learning Chinese because I never though I would be a weeb.
I thought "weeb" slur was refering to one way into Japanese pop culture, not Chinese.
Now I need to re-learn tons of Kanji
Kanji would be one of the three Japanese writing systems. The written language symbols in Chinese would be Hanzi.
That said, its never too late to learn any language, and any work you did before still helps today as you have a basis for understanding to build on. Depending on how young you learned what you did, you could have some very helpful hard wiring in your brain for other languages than your native one.
I should have clarified that I am learning Japanese now, but most of the Hanja I was taught at school would have been very compatible with what I am doing right now.
I probably wouldn't have started those fires.
But they've been burning since the world's been turnin' :o
Hol up... Am I Billy Joel? 🤔
Saved money from my first jobs. I mostly spent it on CDs which are nice to have a collection of, but kinda useless to me now. Ultimately it doesn't make much difference because it wasn't a lot of money in the grand scheme, but if I had invested it early it could have maybe made my life better now.
Most of us do something like that when we first get money we earned ourselves, myself included. Depending on when you did actually stopped wasting money, this may have had a massively positive impact on your life. If you learned that lesson fairly early, it translated into you making wise spending choices as an older adult. You are successful today because you wasted that money back then and made changes afterward.
Struggling taught me the value of saving. I was still in highschool and working for minimum wage when I moved out on my own, and that was when I stopped wasting money. I was more concerned with securing my next meal. Experiencing it at that age absolutely influenced my habits into adulthood, to the point I agree about calling it a personal success - that is to say I'm still poor, but nowhere near as screwed as I would be if I had to learn that lesson today.
I wished I learned either to play the guitar or focused on learning Spanish outside a classroom.
I wish I would have learned how to dance as a kid.
I used to be able to read music, quite easily. Then I stopped playing instruments that required actual music reading skills. Now I can’t read for shit, takes forever to remember that note names.
However, it doesn’t change anything about my life as it’s just a hobby and not something I depend on to survive.