I don’t know what I want to do, either. Sometimes, it’s just a niggling annoyance.

There’s a little girl who lives across the street from me. She doesn’t go to school for some reason. She remains on her bicycle, pedaling up and down and up and down the street for hours at a time, talking to herself. When I started to talk with her, her mother (I supposed) called her inside. And when she is outside with her mother, she walks three feet behind, always.

So what should I do? That’s how I answer these questions. What should I do NOW? That helps me get to the next place.

Pamela inspired me to say thank you. I read your work all the time, kept checking in during your hiatus, and never thought to tell you thanks for all the times a post like this hit home.

Hey, thanks.

Don’t get sucked into that school job. Keep writing. The world needs your voice.

One thing that you are: a writer. Now, already–but I have a feeling that you will be a lot more.

Please let me first say how interesting, refreshing, significant, funny, and well written I find your blog. I would also like to say that I found the photos that you took with the camera Ed gave you to be hauntingly beautiful in their simplicity.

Perhaps one way to approach the question “What do I want to do?” is to do what you are doing concerning the substitute teacher’s job offer–saying yes without taking time out to review the offer fully, realizing that you don’t want to commit yourself to doing that activity, changing your mind, deciding that you will notify those concerned of your new decision, notifying them, and tolerating the discomfort that comes up when you do so–knowing, deep inside yourself, that the discomfort will pass in time and that you will be happier with your new decision. Over and over… Until you begin to grant yourself “time” to reflect before you say “yes.” I used a mantra for a long time–”The answer is no, until the answer is yes”–to trick myself into finding out what I wanted before I agreed to anything anyone else wanted.

Perhaps another way to approach the question “What do I want to do?” is to do what you do so well, continue the creative endeavor of your blog. It is a splendid and powerful expression of who you are. It is concrete and beautiful. It invites reflection and interaction with loved ones and complete strangers. Be confidence. It is your work of art, as is your unique daily life.

Perhaps a third way to approach the question “What do I want to do?” is to keep remembering that you are doing some things that you want to do and that you are interested in expanding your life to include more of those activities. I used a visualization for a long time that consisted of me keeping my right hand on the pulse of my left hand to remind myself to stay in touch with my internal source of inspiration.

Perhaps you have enough tools in your black bag, but maybe borrowing a tool or two from a cyberneighbor in support of your quest to evolve into doing what you want to do will be supportive.

Perhaps…

Amitiés,

You can sub at school sometimes if you want to pick up some extra money, or you can try it out once and then have them take you off the list, telling them that you don’t think it’s a good fit after all, or you can ask them to take you off the list because you changed your mind. Unless you really, really need the money, then you don’t have to do it.

I just finished taking a class at mediabistro in person in NYC, but they do online classes too. You might want to have a look at their course offerings. I picked the class I took when I looked at some listings and a lightbulb went off in my head. (I just suggestmediabistro, since you obviously like to write–maybe a different kind of online course would be more to your liking.) But with writing–living outside of NYC and LA would actually help you get published in national magazines, since most of the readers live outside of those places, but the editors all live IN those places so they need writers with a different perspective.

Thanks to technology, you can do a lot of kinds of work from where you live, so don’t feel restricted by location. Good luck!

But definitely get out of it if you don’t want to do it!