Dear Journal: The Next Step

Dear Journal,

I’m thinking about a career again, and not teaching, or Target, or any of the various other jobs I’ve had in my life. As much as I enjoy teaching, I think summer school is going to be it for me for the foreseeable future, and maybe that time was past anyway, what with all this new common core stuff that is driving others crazy. And it seems as if the career trajectory at Target is in an endless holding pattern. Maybe I’m just tired of waiting, and working hard, just to ultimately stand still.

But what other experience do I have? I was looking at my resume again the other day, and I noticed that there really isn’t anything past writing that I haven’t covered in my two other “careers” to date. It’s just too bad that the odds are as poor as they are for writers to make a living simply doing that. I write every single day, and I have various projects I constantly juggle, but where is that one home run that will land me in J.K. Rowling land? I don’t know, but I haven’t ruled it out yet.

Sometimes I go into the library and I see these tutors with children, or teenagers, or even adults, helping them learn what they don’t know, and I think I can do that. Indeed, I have done that several isolated times in the past, but it hasn’t gone past a set period of time, and I haven’t really been able to supplement it beyond that. Is tutoring really a career anyway? It reminds me of being a server in a restaurant (another job I’ve done for several isolated times in the past) where you get tips but not nearly enough to live off of in any real way.

Maybe I could be a school librarian because it combines two of my passions — being a teacher of sorts, and being around books and other resources. I’ve joked about it before, too, but it means going back to school and I have enough loans as it is. Why does everything have to be so difficult, even past making the initial decision? I guess I just want things to be easy, but I’ve made it hard on myself and I have to live with it. But I don’t have to accept just one path. Not necessarily, anyway. We’ll see.

Sam