I wanted to be a writer or a musician most of my life. My dream had a great deal of glory involved in it most of the time. I wanted to be a famous author who revolutionized the world of the written word; I wanted to be a famous musician who brought together the extremes of creativity and accessibility—I wanted to make music that the most artistic minds would respect and that the most unsophisticated sensibilities would really enjoy, whether or not they recognized how brilliant or creative it was. So what am I to do with those things?
That was the unspoken question with which I approached Katie, and in my time working with her, we came up with two solid answers—or, rather, two much better questions—and a lot of good ideas about how to bring them into reality. Briefly, when you have a dream: (1) find out what’s at its core; and (2) figure out what else you want. Dreams like mine are always both too much and too little to be of immediate use.
You have to really know yourself to know what you really dream for, and you have to know something about how the world works to see where a life following those dreams will land you, and that takes help from outside, from community, from ‘counselors’ in the broadest sense of the term.
What am I to do with those dreams?
Take the first one. What am I really after? I want to write, sure. That’s something I can do whether or not I make a living doing it. I want to change things with my writing. That’s doable, too. Revolutionizing anything may or may not happen—and, importantly, I have not given up that fantasy, and if you ask me on most days whether or not I think it’s going to happen, you will likely hear some form of a “yes”—but I can, with some effort, reasonably expect to change people, or at least encourage them to rethink some things, with my writing. Making an impact is a legitimate goal.
So then, what else do I want? When I say I want to write, what else am I after? Katie posed this question early, and with a series of pretty incisive conversations and diagnostics, we got somewhere with it. Well, I want to make my own schedule and have my own priorities; I want to be creatively engaged with things that interest me; I want people to respond to me and give me feedback, so I know how I’m doing and whether or not what I’m communicating makes sense.
Those are clues.
On a more nuts-and-bolts level, I want to spend at least some of every day writing and at least some of every day doing something tangible that helps people. I am naturally what they call a “maestro,” as opposed to what they call a “tribal” personality—I’d rather be an expert in something who gets called in for particular occasions than someone who’d prefer to work in a pack.
Those are all clues, too.
When Katie had me look through a deck of cards with a different photograph on each one—some with people, some of nature, some of old woodsheds, crowds, monuments, all sorts of things—and she asked me to pick out the ones that most grabbed my attention, we were both surprised and intrigued when the six I picked out all had pictures of people on them, most of them with people interacting. We had both had me pegged as more of a ‘thinker’ than a ‘feeler,’ but all the pictures I picked screamed that there was a ‘feeler’ in there to be acknowledged. Surprising, interesting, revealing—another clue. I also realized I want time to pursue music, too, even if writing is more important. While music may not be an actual part of my career—though music reviewing may be—I know it’s important, and I want a career that accommodates that.
You always know more than you think. And it takes someone who knows people and who knows the real world to bring that out and show you where you fit. That’s where Katie was indispensable.
I didn’t come away from career coaching knowing the next chapter of my story verbatim. I didn’t even come away knowing when this limbo period would be over and I’d actually feel like a grown-up, living in a coherent narrative again. But I did come away knowing with much greater clarity and realism that writing is in my future, as I’ve long hoped it would be, that people are in my future, as I was surprised to find I so badly wanted them to be, and that there is a place for me in the real world—namely, a small college somewhere where I can teach, write, engage with people, and have time to pursue my other interests. I now know some steps to take to find it.
I don’t think progress is as simple or as automatic as I did when I was young, but I am pretty sure, now, that it didn’t end when I graduated, and it may have some more surprises in store for me in the future.
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