it’s okay that you don’t know what you want yet (whether you’re 18, 24, or 30)

I need to start this post by saying that I don’t know who needs to hear this more, me or you. I want you to know that I’m not saying these things as a self-righteous know it all who’s already been there, cause believe me, I’m also sometimes buried in a swamp of fear about where the future is going to drag me (while I’m definitely screaming and crying). But nonetheless, I’m going to do my best to help you understand that everything is okay and ITS OKAY to not know what you’re doing yet. None of us do. We’re all making it up as we go.

In the context of this article, I’m mostly talking about for your career, but this advice can be applied at large for whatever you feel like you need to know: who you’re going to start a family with, where you’re going to “settle down,” or what you’re going to make for dinner tomorrow. The weight of it all is too heavy to carry around with you. Sometime or another, you’re going to have to either choose to put it down or something is going to make you drop it. Unfortunately for me, I carry things much like a dog carries a tug-of-war rope in its mouth, so I was forced to drop it eventually by the pull of the all-knowing universe. I’ll tell you the story to hopefully inspire you to just drop it. Or maybe you’re reading this article from the floor, tired and lost cause maybe you just had the all-knowing universe pull it all away from you, too, and you don’t know what to do next. I got you.

I, like most writers, struggle to determine where the story starts. Someone will always sarcastically tell you “the beginning” but for me, the beginning is boring and normal, so I’ll skip that part. At around year 14 it gets really sad and stays sad for some time, then gets somehow worse at 17, and then gets way better before it gets worse again, then it gets better, then Really Bad, and now it’s good. I used to think this was an insane character arch, but it turns out this is how life is for most people. Some call it the ebb and flow of life. All of that is to say that I’m going to start from when I was about 22.

I graduated college in 2021 with a degree in Elementary Education. I had to pretend like I was really excited because usually graduating is really exciting, but in all reality I was shitting-my-pants scared. I had a really bad student teaching experience, and knew that I didn’t really want to be a teacher and I felt like I just wasted a ton of money and time. My degree wasn’t particularly translatable between different careers, so I was even more scared. After college, you kind of get thrown to the wolves in a worse way than going from high school to college, cause this is the first time you realize that you weren’t really on your own in college the way you thought you were, and now you actually are. It sucked.

This is the beginning of my job hopping journey. It feels sort of like I’m the hero in an illyad of my own when I retell the stories of my early adult life, which makes it more bearable than it felt while it was happening. Upon graduating, I first got a job at a residential treatment center in Salt Lake because I thought I would be able to work my way into an outdoor education career. Didn’t work out, and it paid really badly. I was barely living, and at the time my rent was 500 dollars living with 3 other people. After that, I thought maybe I should just give teaching a good honest shot, so I got a job in a public school as an intervention specialist. I loved the school and still do love that school so much. I’ve always loved kids, and those ones in particular I loved so much.

Simultaneously to this, I was working on becoming an independent music producer for my at the time solo project called Silo Red. Silo Red was my passion project, and being a teacher in my mind was just something I needed to do until I could produce full-time. I had a barely functioning studio set up in a basement and hardly knew anything about what I was doing.

At this time, I was just a Teacher/Musician, and I thought that that was complicated.

I taught for another year at the same school. I was a Special Education Teacher now, with no training in special education, showing up to work and winging it every day. I was in a one-sided relationship with someone who sucked the life out of me. My apartment was a mess. I discovered that I had PMDD, and for about 5 days a month would wonder why I hadn’t ended it already. This was the height of the Really Bad. The only thing I cared about was Silo Red, and my new co-musician, roommate, buddy, etc. Olivia.

Towards the end of the school year, I met my now partner Trevor. This was the beginning of the end of the Really Bad. But even as Trevor filled in some of the gaps where I felt things were missing in my life, he didn’t and couldn’t solve my search for meaning and purpose. I left teaching in 2023 entirely, music production came to a halt as Olivia pursued endeavors 5 hours away, and now I was forced to sit down and think: WTF am I doing with my life??

Trevor was a photographer, I was an artist. I liked photography. We started a photography business. I also do digital artwork and sell prints for said business. I decided also that I would get back to writing and become a freelance copywriter. Olivia moved back and I started producing again. Needed money, have to teach a little in the meantime. I already do service work, how about becoming a firefighter? What about UX/UI design? Trevor and I have a great idea for a new, humane social media app.

What does all of this make me?? I’m not just an (insert occupation) anymore. I have been rewriting and revising my LinkedIn page for over two months. How do I combine all of these skills into something that I can call myself? Everyone else gets to call themselves something, but I didn’t. Momentarily, I actually almost wished I was a suffering teacher. At least I was something.

You would hope that at the end of this story, like any other “good” story, there would be a satisfying resolution. But for me, there wasn’t one, really. I still don’t know exactly where I’m going, or what I’m doing, I think I just care less. I’m not just a teacher, or a writer, or a photographer, or designer, but I am Kat. And a story teller. I tell stories, through all kinds of mediums, and not all of them follow a crisp story arch with a beautiful, cherry-on-top finish. They’re way more messy than that. But the one thing that I do have lending itself to me is that they’re raw, and they’re real. Real life is like that. So in some ways, maybe the messy starts, middles, and endings are really the beautiful parts too.

I tell you all of this because I think it can be easy to get wrapped up in the “what am I’s” and “where am I going’s.” I did, and sometimes still am. But could it just be that you’re in the middle of a big, ugly, endearing, chaotic, messy yet utterly beautiful story? You don’t have to be anything. All of those arbitrary labels are just so that we can sort people better, they’re made up and we’re going along with it. It’s okay if you have 50 different passions and don’t know where to go from there. You don’t have to. I believe, and want you also to believe, that the things you create and become along the way are more than enough. So finally, please, put the extra weight down, and go drink some water.