I’m currently listening to Leslie Jones’s book, Leslie F*cking Jones. (It’s awesome and you should listen to it because she goes off script A LOT.) In the book, she talks a lot about Quantum Leap moments (yes, based on the TV show), what she describes as the moments she wishes she could go back in time and give her younger self advice or tell herself things she wishes she had known.

That got me thinking about my own Quantum Leap moments.

Normally, when anyone asks if I have any regrets, I always say I only have one, and that’s giving up yoga for years after my grandmother died. I’m sure I’ve blogged about it before, but I stopped because every time I did yoga, I would get sad, and I thought yoga was making me sad and didn’t recognize that, no, I was already sad and yoga was the only time I was still enough/in my body enough to feel it. It’s one of my biggest regrets because I used to be so strong and–well, I have never been flexible, but I was definitely way more limber than I am now.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Quantum Leap moments are not about regrets, so that made me think where are some times/places I would want to give myself advice.

1. I would still definitely tell myself not to quit yoga.

2. I would tell myself to prioritize my own mental/physical health the same way I did with my daughter’s. I made sure she had a therapist, ADHD coaching, went to the doctor, etc. And while I had gotten better about medical stuff, even after I had one therapist say that something was still going on with me because I was still getting headaches and another tell me that I had PTSD, I didn’t deal with any of that with professional therapy or mental health counseling because I was so busy making sure my daughter was okay. That’s not a knock, but there was probably a middle ground where we could have switched off weeks for therapy or something.

3. I would tell myself to write down and remember all of the POSITIVE things people said about me or the positive experiences I had. In that same vein, I would tell myself to actually practice gratitude, and not in the gratitude journal kind of way, but in the way where you can balance seeing the positive of a situation as well as the negative. We would joke in college that every cloud has a silver wrapper lining (a condom joke, you’re welcome), but the truth is that as I’ve gotten older, there is usually something positive even in the worst situations. Either someone’s behavior or something that made me laugh or taught me something about a person. Even if the something positive is “wow, that person is a total a-hole,” it works because now I know who I’m dealing with.

4. I would say to focus on the boys that did like me (even if I didn’t like them back) because it would mean that my narrative about boys not liking me wouldn’t be true.

5. I would tell myself to spend time with people who made an effort to see me or spend time with me instead of trying to make fetch happen with people who did not. (This is advice I still need to remember, honestly.)

6. I would tell fourteen-year-old me that YOU ARE NOT FAT. Jesus Christ. The pom pon uniforms were the least flattering in existence, and of course you didn’t know how to pose for your picture in it, and also you were right when you fought against it being the new uniform.

7. I would tell grad school me YOU ARE NOT FAT. Because if I could get back to the weight I was before I tried to lose weight, I would be more than satisfied. Oh, and it’s not your weight that’s the issue. It’s the fact that grad school sucks, and you want a win, but losing weight that you then don’t keep off because that was not the real issue is a false victory.

8. I would 100,000 percent tell grad school me that when that one professor said the professor you wanted to be your advisor wasn’t taking on new students that you should have asked anyway.

9. I would also tell myself that you are right to want to switch advisors, and it’s absolutely okay to see if either of the other two professors you thought would be a better fit for you are available, politics be damned.

10. I would also tell grad school me to see about transferring or switching programs instead of dropping out of the PhD program.

11. I would tell 2005 me that instead of only applying to graduate programs in creative writing that I should explore programs that allow a creative dissertation.

12. Basically, the PhD program was good for what it was good for, and I’m grateful for my time there and the excellent friends I made, but man alive, I could have come out of graduate school with an actual doctorate if I had (a) followed my instincts and/or (b) asked for help.

13. Instead of only requesting to get out of that one lease, ask for your security deposit back as well.

And now it’s close to midnight, so post this I must, though I am sure I would probably be able to think of a few more if I had a little more time. But I also like a good list of thirteen, so this is a great place to stop for that as well.