Just wait until you get older, things that involve money get compounded, I made a decision at uni 2001 to not study ai, I decided bitcoin wasn't worth it when that dude bought a pizza with it, bought a house too late and just before the financial crash. I did notice that bad shit was about to go down or at least the potential to at xmas 2019 with covid, not that there was much I could do about it. (Probably due to playing pandemic)

Most decisions in life are a gamble, and usually the odds are stacked massively against you, so don't worry about it too much

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

–Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

My two best friends growing up chose to branch off and get into heavy drugs. One died two years ago, the other just two weeks ago.

I always saw both of them as being so much smarter than I am.

It’s pretty lonely being wrong.

Omg I ruminate on alt-timelines about decisions that weren't even my own. Like the alt-timeline where I was never born, or never moved abroad, or if I got different classes, that maybe I didn't get bullies, or like the alt-timeline where I left my country earlier and didn't get to keep my multilingualism. Or like maybe I could do things differently at home so that my parents loved me more, or like tried to make more friends... etc...

I get it. I think that's just brain.exe doing brain.exe things.

The worst part is those traumatic memories tho, I still remember one of those from like... a long time ago... been re-living that day for a long time. What if the outcome was worse? What if I never made it out of that situation alive?

So... yeah...

idk

OCD

CPTSD

🤷‍♂️

It's not weird to think about the other paths you could have gone down. But I would avoiding feeling too much regret. If something genuinely seems interesting to you, make it part of your current life, even just as a hobby or side project. Remembering that we are more than just our current selves is important for not getting swallowed by the grind.

If it's feeling envy about the better life some alternate you has, try to keep in mind that nothing is simple. Although other choices might seem appealing in abstract, maybe they'd also lead to more problems. Sure, you could have been a doctor, but maybe the stress would have driven you to burnout and opiate addiction (69% of doctors misuse prescription substances).

I'd also say, that as I get older, I feel like I hit different "Save Points" that prevent to much regret. I chose to study philosophy instead of law, which means I'm a lot less rich than I might have been, but I would trade my weird, chilled friends from uni for the bunch of competitive over achievers I would have been "friends" with if I'd gone down that route. I met my spouse during a stressful period in my life, completing a degree for a profession I no longer work in. I could see that whole period of study as a complete waste of time, but if I'd never met the person I married the my life would be incomparably poorer.

Welcome to the rest of your life. There'll be a lot more of this.

Well, son, a funny thing about regret is
That it's better to regret something you have done
Than to regret something you haven't done.
And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend
Would you be sure and tell her...

This is definitely a shower thought. Good news, at 24 there is plenty of time to backtrack and reroute.

I'm a bit similar, I am only in my current career because I responded to an job ad email that was later rescinded.

I often regret a lot of decisions and long for the paths I didn't take. Then I remember that I was very likely to take a path that would have gotten me killed. Be it through rape, accident, suicide, or - most likely - by drinking myself to death. My life right now isn't what I thought it would be, a lot of things didn't turn out as I had yearned for, but it is a nice life and I am so grateful. So when I get sad about the missed opportunities, I try to humble myself and be grateful and impressed by what I have achieved. I didn't die. And if I think about what deep pit I got out of, then my "life career" is so much steeper than a lot of people's. Going from the mariana trench to the coast is quite a climb, even if you're just at sea level at the end.

Life is a series of closing doors.

I remember my dad saying he regretted having not done a different degree in his 20s. I love him and I know he didn't mean anything by it, but it did feel like he was saying he regretted having the life that ended up with me in it.

Since then I've tried never to regret a decision, but still to learn from mistakes.

Having a little regret is normal. However, when it comes to "paths not taken", you CANNOT know for sure where that path takes you in detail.

Think about all the good stuff that has happened so far. If you had taken a different path, it could have been even better. They could also be a lot worse.

If everything went to plan in my life I definitely wouldn't be on the same spot right now, for better or for worse. But you can never know for sure.

That's how I deal with regrets about the past. As a fact, I did even try out a career path, just because "I could be regretting not taking this opportunity", only to end up regretting about taking that path

I recommend the book "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig. It's about a woman who almost dies and gets to experience a bunch of alternate lives she could have lived if she made different choices