A confluence of events has me mulling over thoughts of school - mine, my children’s.  In June my oldest graduated from high school.  In August I had my twenty year reunion (that’s my web designer and high school friend in the picture). I recently took my eleven-year-old back-to-school shopping.  A few days ago Darling Daughter started college.  The forces of nostalgia cannot be resisted.

The biggest theme I’m getting from these experiences is Direction.  Do you know your Direction?  Do you have goals?  Are you losing site of them, or are you keeping them ahead of you, shining like a beacon in the night?  Here are my personal reasons for having Direction on the brain for the past few months.

First of all, senior year for DD meant having to narrow down what she wanted to do after high school.  She knew she would continue with schooling.  Knowing what you might be interested in studying helps with deciding where to go.  DD could not pin this down.  Not even in a broad sense.

Now DD is a very intelligent girl with tons of capability.  So, was it fear of making the wrong choice that kept her from defining a future course?  I’m not sure.  I do sympathize with all of you coming upon this stage in your life.  By junior year there is pressure to figure out what you want to be at 22 and to start making a game plan to get there.

My twenty year reunion brought about reminders, of course, of my own high school experiences, especially what choices I made since then that have brought me to where I am now.  You can’t help but think back to that age and what you thought you wanted to do with your life and compare it to reality.

I strongly urge you to not do what I did.  At seventeen I had this vague idea of doing something with writing, but I never visualized exactly what that would be.  I didn’t look beyond the day I was living in.  I had no long term plan.  I went to college, but got distracted, then started a family.  I lucked out marrying a great guy and having the chance to work around books for a while – but that vague writing goal hung  like an amorphous cloud just out of sight and out of reach for too many years.

A few years ago, realizing that almost twenty years had passed since I began charting my own course, I took a hard look and realized I wasn’t doing what it took to change that vague writing idea into a hardcover book in my hands with my name on the spine.

So here I am.  38, throwing myself into a clearly defined goal.  You may not have the answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up” right now, but I strongly urge you to actively work that vague interest into solidity, instead of standing by as it dissolves into a shapeless notion so easily forgotten.