Although my husband and I did see this movie, this post is not a movie review. While I had no trouble watching the movie, I wasn’t bowled over by it, and the next day I felt it did not make much of an impression, with the exception of one theme: Given the right life choices, anyone can become anything.

I mostly agree with this, if right choices includes a few other factors, like choosing one’s parents. Yet believing you could have been something else is a trap that leads to regret, and regret of one’s life choices is never productive. Regret of crimes, cruelty, and inhumanity committed during adulthood is allowed; in fact, assuming you have any of those, the rest of your life should be spent redressing them. Most of us don’t! Don’t overthink this!

Instead of lying awake at night trying to figure out why I never became a classical pianist or a research scientist, I like to think about the things that I am, based on evidence of what I do. One thing I am is a volunteer. I have been volunteering for all of my adult life, pretty much weekly, and also served several stints as a teen.

I am also a dancer, primarily folk genre. At various periods in my life I have done square, contra, Scottish, English, Balkan, Zumba, and Morris dancing regularly, in some cases as a performer, and can acquit myself well enough in swing, salsa, zydeco, and waltz as the occasion arises. Although I had occasional ballet and modern dance lessons as a child, most of my dance acumen come from hearing music and moving.

Instrumental music and singing are central, though I have trouble calling myself a musician, perhaps because I know so many professional ones, which I’ve never been unless you count getting paid some travel money for playing at a folk dance. I listen closely to music and attend performances, mostly classical these days, and sing often, sometimes with a choir. I play the piano almost every day, and dabble in the ukulele, 25-string harp, and Otamatone. I have intermittently played the Anglo concertino and a trap set, and dream of owning a hurdy-gurdy, though not strongly enough that I’m willing to sell my car to buy one.

I am a reader. I read all the time, doubtless averaging a book a week, plus magazines and (online) newspapers. I turn to books for answers, information, entertainment, advice, guidance, succor, recipes, everything. I turn to people for a lot of those things too, since occasionally my eyes need a rest focusing at 14″, which they also do when reading music or using a computer.

I am an intellectual in at least one way: I am interested in ideas. I like to imagine things and to do thought experiments. I fear that there are multiple ways of looking at anything, which is fun but also tiring and sometimes confusing.

I’m a pretty good home cook, and a bit of a nutrition nutcase.

Most people identify with their careers, and certainly being an engineer shaped me, but it was a career I chose because I was tired of being lower-middle-class, not because I was inspired by the work. I think like an engineer in that I feel problems have solutions and that I can locate and implement same. Or I used to feel that way. Current problems seem to have become messier. Being a teacher was never really a career even though I did it for 13 years, because I never bought into education theory, which made me a maverick in a very hierarchical world, which pretty much precludes advancement.

I would like to think I am a good friend, mother, and wife, but that is for others to determine. In the end, one’s effect on others may be the best assessment of a life, yet that is mostly unknowable.