Ideas to write "Life II"

People have asked me how I got the idea to write "Life II." It came from several occasions in my past where I visualized how different my life would be. If I had chosen this career instead of the other. If I had ditched a close friend of mine and more closely pursued another that held great promise (in my opinion) for my own development as a person. If I had been able to warn a person of an upcoming personal unforeseen accident or calamity, or an ill-advised fundamental choice upon how to live his or her life, the latter which is only apparent upon a long period of hindsight. All these dilemmas are present in "Life II." But we never get second chances to live our lives over again. Thus, I introduced time travel into "Life II" which lends it a nice science fiction feel. I'm a huge fan of all "Back to the Future" movies. One aspect that differentiates my story from other time travel stories is that there's really no time machine. Nope. In "Life II," Max could not just step in a time machine and fly wherever (whenever?) he wanted, either in the past or the future. To make my story more focused on Max as an individual, I introduced the concept that he could only jump backward in time, never forward (except by living one day at a time, like all the rest of us). Thus, the temptation to over-use the "time machine" is greatly downplayed, and this much more limited set of choices adds more strength to the story.