At 3:30 a.m. I lie awake in bed, star­ing over the mound of blan­ket that is my hus­band next to me, over to the fuzzy wall behind him. Fuzzy, only because I am near blind with­out my glasses on or con­tacts in.

I am par­a­lyzed with anx­i­ety. Para­lyzed. A mil­lion thoughts run through my head, mostly about things that I could have done but did not do over the last, oh, say, 10 years. Regret is an unfriendly beast, my friends, and it keeps you up on a week­day morn­ing for two hours at a time.

I regret a hand­ful of things in my near thirty years of exis­tence. Some are small — cer­tain hair­styles from the 3^rd and 4^th grades, for exam­ple. But some are way big­ger than I’ll ever be able to fully tackle — the mild depres­sion in my first year of col­lege that led to weird social habits, the way I han­dled my move to New York and my first apart­ment, my lack of bud­get­ing habits and con­versely my keen knack for spend­ing, and there is, lest I ever for­get, my poor career choices. Oh, career, how I hate you as a con­cept. I ran through a lot of –what if’s?- last night, many sce­nar­ios deal­ing with my career, and two hours later I was still up, putting this blog post together in my head. Well, at least I can be pro­duc­tive while sleep-deprived.

I don’t believe peo­ple when they say they have no regrets. The Diplo­Man says he doesn’t have any. He also doesn’t “miss” things, because he says he’s always look­ing for­ward to what’s to come. Well, he’s my Super­man, so he doesn’t count. For the rest of us imper­fect human beings, we make mis­takes — lots of them — and some of these lead to feel­ings of regret. 99% of the time, I’m regret free, but then there are those spaces in my life, the mere 1% of times when I sit in a quite void of dark­ness (like 3:45am on a Thurs­day morn­ing), star­ing into noth­ing and think­ing about everything.

There’s a solu­tion though, which to me comes when I’m exhausted down to my bones at 5a.m. and there’s noth­ing really left to think about. When I become deliri­ous with frus­tra­tion, I’m finally able to con­front regret, mourn it, leave it, and look for­ward. Because until they invent time travel, think­ing about what I would have done serves no pur­pose. It’s just too bad it takes me awhile to get to this point.

Don’t get me wrong, usu­ally I’m look­ing for­ward. Most days it feels pretty good, some­times it’s just mediocre, and most recently, it’s been pretty great. For exam­ple, as hor­rid as my career tra­jec­tory has been in the past, I’ve recently been look­ing for­ward to estab­lish­ing my own thing (what­ever that means) and one day hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to share it with the world. I’m look­ing for­ward to explor­ing new parts of the United States, after much time explor­ing parts abroad. I’m look­ing for­ward to my time in DC, which I’ve come to love so much as my new adopted home­town. I’m look­ing for­ward to the win­ter, and look­ing for­ward to steam­ing hot bowls of soup to sus­tain my days out East.

My dear part­ner in life only likes one kind of soup, though — that of the lentil vari­ety — so I’m forced to make the best ver­sions of lentil soup I can pos­si­ble make, in hopes to one day veer him to the path of say, chicken tor­tilla soup, or mine­strone, or but­ter­nut squash. Wait, no, this dear hus­band of mine also cares not a lick about squash, nor beets, nor sweet pota­toes, nor brus­sels sprouts. Seri­ously, what’s a woman to make for din­ner from September-March???

For now, lentil soup will most def­i­nitely do. In the kitchen, I’m able to con­fi­dently say I have no regrets. I can take full con­trol and make some­thing out of noth­ing. So look­ing for­ward, I’m will­ing this win­ter to be a nice cold one, and I’m will­ing a ton of lentil soup to be made. My first pot of the sea­son was upon my return from New Orleans, and was rich with a lovely oxtail soup base and sweetly fla­vored with a mire­poix of leeks and salt ham. It was thick­ened, not only with lentils, but with 3 dif­fer­ent types of beans as well. If I’m doing a lentil soup, I’m hav­ing no regrets.

Lentil Soup for the Soul

• 1 cup assorted beans, soaked (will come to be 2–3 cups)
• 4 oz. salt pork
• 1/2 large yel­low onion, finely diced
• 1/2 large leek, finely sliced
• 1 small car­rot, diced into small cubes
• 1 rib cel­ery, diced into small cubes
• 1 small rus­set potato, diced into 1/8-inch cubes
• 1 cup lentils (I used black and yel­low lentils)
• 6 cups oxtail stock (see recipe below)

Oxtail Stock

**I was going to make a lovely pork broth out of pork neck bones as I’m apt to do, but Whole Foods had NO NECK BONES OR ANY OTHER BONES WHATSOEVER. The only thing they had were oxtails, which were fine, but c’mon! You call your­selves a butcher counter???!!?

• 1 lb. oxtail bones
• 1 large car­rot, cut into 6 pieces
• 1 large yel­low onion, cut into quarters
• 2 ribs cel­ery, cut into 8 pieces
• fen­nel fronds (I keep these in my freezer, cut off from when I use fen­nel in salads)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp. peppercorns
• 1 Tbsp. salt
• 8–10 cups water

1. Wash oxtail bones under water. In a large pot of boil­ing water, drop oxtail bones in and cook for 3 min­utes. Drain, and rinse bones again. (I do this with most bones before cook­ing in soup or stock; it gets rid of a lot of excess fat and gristle)
2. In a large clean and dry pot, heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil over high heat. Add onion, car­rot, cel­ery, and fen­nel fronds. Brown veg­eta­bles, if pos­si­ble. After 3–5 min­utes, add oxtail and sear sides. Cook for a 5–7 min­utes, and add water to top of the pot. Throw in the bay leaves, pep­per­corns, and a spoon­ful of salt. Cover.
3. When water comes to a boil, turn heat to low. Sim­mer for about 2 hours.
4. Drain veg­eta­bles and oxtail into a con­tainer using a sieve. Use stock imme­di­ately, or reserve for another time.

Yield: 4 quarts of stock