Musings on "The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying"

Upon reading Joe Martino's article "The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying", I've had the following thoughts.

The most common regret was "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me". I have to ask myself - what do I want? What is "true" to me? And what exactly do others expect?
I want some bit of adventure. Maybe this is just me being young and male; it seems stereotypical of my demographic. But I dream of road trips, sailing ships, and broadening my horizons. I want to enjoy an ease of living, too; to spend my time doing things for myself rather than an employer or other. I want to have a garden and live on a sailboat. I want to have a pretty and happy wife and to have kids.
Others expect me to provide for them, particularly the wife and children. Still others expect me to do well professionally, like my parents. Still others, as a recent meeting with a group of old friends proved, expect me to have a career in public garden curation. I want all of these things to various degrees, but each people group has a unique goal for me to work toward.

Second most common, and coming entirely from men (however that statistic worked, I don't know, but I suspect the sample examined was predominantly male), was "I wish I hadn't worked so hard".
How can I avoid this? Do what comes naturally, I suppose. But really, how can I work so that I don't miss out on family life? My assumption is that I will need to work, and though I've questioned that assumption thoroughly, it seems to hold true. I could work from home, bring my children to work, work 40 hours or less, or work hard to retire or semi-retire early.
Working from home would be great, but what work can be done from home? Anything I'm interested in? I could be an estate gardener, or an employee of a business which had on-grounds housing. It would seem that the ideal would be to work at Longwood Gardens, live on property, and homeschool children. In this way, I'd constantly be around my family, my children would have the run of the place(hopefully they'd like plants), and life would be neatly organized around work and family.
Bringing children to work is an idea; I could be an entrepreneur and bring my children to jobsites. They'd be with me all day, learn from my work how to work, and enjoy the community around them. They'd learn social and job skills, though they wouldn't be around children their age much at all. This is important, I think, and deserves more research.
I could work part time, but this would limit my options to highly-paid positions and/or extreme frugality. I'm on board for both, so no problem there.
I could, lastly, work and save to travel frugally with family, driving around and/or sailing around, racking up a lifetime of family experiences I wouldn't, hopefully, regret. There's risk to this, and little stability, but what adventure! What worldly children, too! It'd be a great way for children to learn.

The third most common regret was not expressing personal feelings. I'm usually good about this, it's just that I don't have too many cares currently, and therefore don't feel strongly about many things. Giving a damn is hard when you care so little about so little, but it's a great stress-reliever. I used to read the newspaper, follow politics, and attempt to be a good christian republican. Now that that awful pox of a phase is over, I can rest without fear or hate. Choosing to be a teapot agnostic with my head in the sand was the best investment I've ever made in my happiness.

Fourth most common was the regret of losing touch with friends. This is a fault of mine. I don't invest too much in friendships nor do I create too many. I don't usually run in circles of people with common values, and I derive "no satisfaction from shallow encounters based on values that are not my own". To be honest, I don't enjoy most people's company because I judge their passions and pursuits to be worthless. Take, for instance, an acquaintance of mine who was/is into reality shows. I've never had a conversation with her which did not revolve around celebrity gossip or television shows, and I've also never enjoyed a conversation with her enough to want to see her again. This is really back to question one, living a life true to myself - I can't spend my life in boredom.

The fifth most common regret was "I wish that I had let myself be happier". I've consiously worked towards this for years, using mainly the method of faulty memory. I can't remember things I don't focus on, and I try to focus on things I like. Therefore, it takes a current event and a friend's reminder of past injuries to jog my memory of a person's past wrongs. This rarely makes me a happy person; rather it makes me an angry person. A grudge is too stressful to be worth anything, I need to think positively and enjoy being stress-free. I need to forget more in life than to remember, and to plan more happiness than avoidance of unhappiness. I'm ok with being happily amnesic, but I'd rather major on the "happy" and minor on the "amnesic".

There you have it, hundreds of words which shall remain in the closet of internet obscurity. I aim to gain all the advantages of being a Niemann; from nothing and into it. However, if this closet prose has filled your time, please let me know; it's nice to know somebody's out there. Oh - and "Hi" Scott! I hope your intestines are feeling better!