Time Travel

Ok, if you're a sci-fi geek like me, you've been over and over the whole time continuum thing, and mind bending possibilities that some how leak into multiple realities and multiple time lines and so on and so forth. I thought it was about time that I do my part to further grind this subject into the ground.

Lets start with the basics. Lets say that I regret doing something in the past so I jump in my trusty time machine, go back to the moment before I do that something, and I stop myself. Well then I change the future, don't I? Well, if the future is changed, then my future self won't feel the need to jump in her trusty time machine because the bad thing that I did that inspired the time travel didn't happen, thereby eliminating my trip to the past and therefore I would do that bad thing again and then I'd have to go back in time again, which would be pointless because as soon as I changed the future I would negate to travel to the past, and so on.

Thus are born the need for alternate realities. Because I have gone back to change the past, the future has already happened and all I'm doing now is creating a branch for the new, less regretful me to live in. So...what happens to the me who travelled back in the first place? Do I have to go back to the future I created for myself the first time, or do I get to go to the branch I just created by changing the past? And if I do get to enjoy the new branch of reality, do I then disappear out of the first reality? And if that's the case, that reality would fizzle out eventually, right? Because don't most people have things in their past that they'd like to change and thereby change their futures?

Well, thinking about time travel too long can get you frustrated and short tempered so I'm going to leave it at that. Hope I gave you something to think about!