The Consistently Ambiguous Future

Most of my life is planned out: Get married, have some children, find a way to finish up college.... However, the last part holds an ambiguous future, and not because I fear I will not finish my degree. I am mostly concerned with what I will do with that degree once it is here. What will make me feel better about paying those extreme student loans is a good job, which is what would make most students who don't have parents footing the bill for their education.

I recently started training to be a mentor for first year students at my school. I think this may be a doorway to a career at the school, or at a school, but I am not sure. In a way, I hope it is. However, I also want to have a paying writing career. I don't know how to begin the latter. Do I just write a book and try to get it published? Do I attend workshops that teaches me to write a book? The last (and only) writing workshop I attended presented me with the reality that there is simply no blueprint to writing. You just do it, possibly wearing Nike shoes. And I believe this, as there are many people who just decide to write a book one day, and are able to get it published, although they have no prior experience, and did not ever intend to write a book.

What will I write about? I have a very personal idea for a memoir, but am unsure as to whether or not I am ready to tell my story about this very important part of my past life. I am afraid it may get people (possibly myself) in trouble, I worry that my family would think they failed as a support system, knowing that all these years I have been holding this intense secret. I just don't know. Do I compile all of my poetry from my angered teenage years and try to get that published? Do I write a series of personal essays? Where to start, what to do, and where I will be is so unknown, and I don't like it. I need an assignment. I need to be asked to write something, I need to be given a deadline, I need some type of direction.

In the meantime, I will be pondering all these questions, and hopefully an answer will present itself soon. I am, for the lack of a better term, craving an opportunity.