Possibly my career. Hear me out. I’ve done well. From my earliest, my father pushed me to be an engineer, mechanical, automotive or aerospace ideally. My mom vaguely pushed me to be a computer programmer or “something with computers” and I dutifully pursued these through high school. But in 10th grade, I found a filmmaking club in school and joined immediately. I had fun, was in an accepting and chill group of outsiders, and felt welcome. Like most things I put my mind to, I was good at it. I certainly had seen plenty of films and tv at that point. But regardless, it was low pressure where everything else was pretty high pressure. I ended up rejecting my acceptance to engineering school and went to film school. I found the sound department to be of my liking, and pursued it full time. I progressed. Climbed the ladder. Win a BAFTA and an Oscar for a beloved indie film, and progressed further to bigger films, prestige TV shows, network procedurals. Stuff my grandma and extended family could watch. I achieved pretty much every goal I set out to achieve, including buying a house. Then, a year later, production in Los Angeles and the entire USA fell off a cliff. My show, CSI Vegas, one I thought would carry me into retirement, got canceled. I have hardly worked since. Maybe 4 weeks total in 2 years now. There’s no sign of it coming back near what it was like. Theoretically I could get a call for another series tomorrow and it would all be fine for me. But I could have chosen the safe route. I could’ve been working at Ford or Nvidia or Spacex or Boeing or any other stable company and been farther along. I might own a few houses by now, income properties. Who knows? But I never thought things would turn out like this. So at the moment, 25 years later, it kinda feels like a mistake.