What's Next?

I was told, at a very young age, that if you kept taking the next step in school you would be rewarded with a job. This used to be the case. You take 12 steps and get your high school diploma, you can get a job or you can continue to take 4, 6, or 8 more steps and then get other kinds of jobs. However, now you take these steps, you climb for years and then you are rewarded by being thrown off your last step into nothingness. There is no job at the top of the stairs, there isn’t even a landing with a small stool, there is nothingness.

That’s not true, the only thing at the top of the stairs, is dept, a piece of paper and endless questions. Now I knew that a Creative Writing degree would not promise me great wealth or job security, but I thought in my years of college education I would stumble sideways into a career. “Hey you write a mean haiku would you like to work at this small trendy company and get health benefits including dental?” Excuse me, I do write a mean haiku, I can write a 10page paper in 3 hours, I know MLA formatting off the top of my head, where are my health benefits? Where’s my yearly salary that will afford me a small apartment, gas, groceries and daily coffee?

Setting aside the chance encounter of a career, I’d settle for some clarity. I want to be a fireman, I want to be an astronaut, clarity. I want to be 800 different things. I’m still playing dress up in my head, putting on writer, teacher, therapist, bookbinder, interior decorator, wedding planner, like I put on my mother’s scarves when I was little.

Pick one? Pick one you say? How? How can I choose between all the me’s I can see myself being? When all the next steps are so big and treacherous how can I chose which staircase to climb next?