Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?

I have spent a good chunk of the day ruminating over this prompt, letting it sit in the back of my head while I work and occasionally returning to it to see if any new thoughts come to mind. My dilemma, I’ve decided, is that I have reached a point in my life where the things I don’t take action on I don’t regret. There are plenty of choices I’ve made in my past that have fit the bill but I no longer worry about them because I’ve deemed them as “expired”. Of course, I should clarify, I am referring to important things that no longer matter in the grand scheme of things, or that after a long enough time I realize it was probably for the best anyway.

So instead I’m going to mention something a little more silly.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have been running their Magic: The Gathering releases HARD for the last several years. Some of the products they’ve introduced, specifically their Secret Lair products, have had mixed reception. Some are really good and others lackluster. I’ve only ever purchased one of them because I missed out on the initial release of a particular card (“Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice”, the one I totally didn’t 3D print a figure of to paint.) There have been others that I look back on and wish I had just sucked it up and pulled the trigger on buying. Not many, but there have been some. Honestly, though, it’s just more money spent and I have to rationalize whether it would have really been worth spending on to get cards I may never have played. That’s how I’m getting around the FOMO.

Additionally, the reverse is true for video games. There have been games I bought because of that FOMO that I ended up not playing much. I don’t really regret the purchases, but I definitely could have done something different. Like not buying a game that my friend was all hyped about only to end up barely playing with them at all and moving on to the next big thing.

FOMO sucks. Inaction that leads to regret also sucks. Such is life.