Almost every day I wrap up my two-hour live broadcast and I say to myself as I'm driving home, 'I wish I would've done this' or 'We really should have gone live longer with this segment.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You know it's easy to say you shouldn't do something and then something happens and you say, 'Wow, I wish I would have done something.'
I've anchored my share of live coverage over the years, including car chases. At MSNBC, I often prayed the 'delay switch' would actually work as promised. And, I frequently wondered what I would do or say if a violent and graphic incident accidentally aired on my broadcast.
I'd be lying if I didn't say there were days when I went back and said, 'I wish I'd done this. I should have done that. I handled this the wrong way.' But it's always in the motivation of getting better. I've never once looked in the mirror and said, 'Oh boy, can't do this one.'
I wish I could look back and say, 'OK here was a T.V. show or a movie that I thought was so perfect for me', or, 'I did such a good job that if I died tomorrow at least I could say I left that as my legacy.' But there isn't anything that falls into that category.
There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.'
All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it.
I've done so many Lifetime movies; at this point, I'll be going through airport security, and the lady there will be like, 'I took the weekend off and I saw four of your movies.' And I say: 'You've been watching Lifetime, right?'
If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
I rarely come away from presenting the 'Today' programme without some sense of regret. There is always some question that I should have asked, or some point that I should have made. This is annoying but not surprising. Perfection is hard to achieve in a three-hour live programme.
Live riotously lest not you regret the minutes, moments, hours and days of time gone by.