Regrets? Moi? Never!

So do you all have a friend, or friends, who think they're being nice by telling you things that other people have told them about you, or what they think of you?

For example, "Well Pam told me she heard that Jane hates you because you told Todd you thought he was an idiot. And now she says she's never going to talk to you again and she thinks you're ugly and stupid and that she's never liked you anyway. I just thought you'd be interested to hear that. Because I care about you. Because I'm your friend."

I actually don't have friends like that.

Well I did, of course. In the past, circa the years Brandon and Kelly and Dylan and Brenda hung out at the Peach Pit, if you know what I'm saying. (Back in the 80s - the 90210 years. What's with me? I'm on this 90120 kick lately. Anyway....)

True friends, I believe, don't do that. Because it hurts to hear about people talking bad about you. So why would a true friend want to hurt you?

But while I don't have friends who do that, I often (or really, really often for some reason) receive e-mails from perfect strangers telling me that I'm being discussed on certain message boards and then they'll provide me the links to these message boards. (Really, once even a librarian at a major city newspaper did this.)

Of course I never look at these links.

Yeah right!!!!

Of course I look. (Any author who says they don't read the reviews of their book are lying.)

Someone yesterday sent me a very fascinating link to a message board that had been discussing my book, Knocked Up, and also my views on C-sections, after I wrote an opinion piece about having one in Chatelaine magazine.

But this discussion took off in other directions - how I smoked during pregnancy and drank and...

Ok, to set the record straight, because a lot of people who were discussing my book actually hadn't read it, I smoked maybe ten cigarettes in nine months and I drank maybe two glasses of wine during my entire pregnancy.

In fact, I was one of those pregnant women who couldn't STAND the smell of alcohol while pregnant (or salmon either. or the smell of a gas station.)

One person questioned if I would regret writing certain things I've written, not only in the book, but for the newspapers I have written for for the past 8 years. And, um, boy, this person really remembered things I had written five years ago, that I didn't even remember having written.

And that got me thinking. Do I regret columns I have written?

Here's the thing about writing. At least for me anyway. I don't regret writing (or "admitting") anything that I've ever written that has been published. Why? Because when I wrote it, it was how I was feeling at THAT time.

Writing is a very present activity.

When I wrote Knocked Up, that's what I was feeling while I was knocked up. Looking back, do I think all of the things I thought or did were perfect? Absolutely not. Would I feel different during a second pregnancy? Um, probably.

But it was how I was feeling at THAT time. So, no, I don't ever regret writing anything that I have written. I may regret some of my actions. I may have done certain things (or a lot of things) differently today. But I don't regret writing about them.

And it's the same with the blog. And maybe it is with yours too.

I mean, sometimes I write things and that's exactly how I'm feeling at THAT time, on THAT day, that I've written the entry.

Will I feel differently, would I change my views, in two months time? Or two years time? Or in two days time?

Maybe. Like I said, when you write, you are writing in the present.

So, regrets? Moi? Never! (Well, at least about writing.)

Plus, I'm a woman. A w-o-m-a-n. It's, like, in my DNA to change my mind, whenever I feel like it. That's the whole fun about being female, after all. Don't you agree?