Should I be a tool, or a tool?

I'm 25, and I think I might be in a bit of a career muddle.  I'm not talking about one of those ridiculous quarter life crises.  I don't have a problem with mindlessly working my bum off till the end of my days, seeing as how I am currently doing that for something I'm not sure is going anywhere.  My problem is deciding which path to subject myself to mindless, endless, bum-working-offage.  I feel like I'm up against several options, all of which would credential me rather finely as a tool.

I've been working on my dissertation proposal, and as I was editing it the other day, the strangest thought went through my head: This is the last book I'll write.  I'm not sure where that came from, especially since my dissertation isn't even a dissertation yet, much less a book.  But it's true that I once aspired to be - and believed I would be - a writer.  Turns out I'm not (unless this blog counts...since it's not listed on Amazon.com, I'll go with 'no').  Nor do I longer wish to be - I had my couple of years with the tweed-jacketed, smoking hipsters pontificating existentialism for me to know I couldn't stomach any more ironic stories involving excessively dense prose or excessively minimalist prose, whiskey flasks, and references to masturbation and bowel movements.  At some point we all need to stop thinking it's cool to write about poop.

So that toolish option was checked off the list, and I started thinking I'd be a professor so I could teach and write.  After some short-lived dreams of talking about Kate Chopin for the rest of my life, I went for a more umbrella-like degree with Sociology.  In doing so, I got the master's I always wanted but would never go in debt for because I'd end up defaulting to the government - Women's Studies.  Not sure where it will get me, but sure was fun while it lasted.

I don't regret going to graduate school, but instead of confirming my career path, it only muddied it.  Turns out teaching is as awesome as I imagined.  In fact, I love it - and I think I could be really great at it if I spent thirty years honing such a rewarding craft.  But it's also a sure path to a nervous breakdown, and I just didn't see how I could keep it up for a semester, much less years on end.  Employment was uncertain unless I was content to be vastly underpaid the rest of my life, and even if I did secure a position, I'd continue to battle the profession versus what I wanted to do with it.  I still struggle with how the discipline strives to discipline me.  My dissertation, which I want to be a fun side project, is laden with so many other things that make it awfully sad sometimes. My expectations, the expectations of committee members, finances and tuition costs, question marks, a lingering sense of inadequacy, and fear, always fear.  I'm very good at being afraid, but I'm also pretty good at reading the signs.  In the end, it became clear that the kind of public sociology I'd like to do won't be happening at a university or college...at least not right now.

So the question of what to do remains open.  Like Monty Python says, and now for something completely different!  On to the nonprofit sector.  I start a part time internship with a focus on events and fundraising today.  Next week, I'll start up another internship with a focus on communities and volunteer relations.  I never thought I was much for development, but both are housed in development departments.  Maybe they will help me refine my career directives, or just cross another toolish option off the list.

I keep feeling like I should know more specifically what to do, but, like my partner says, perhaps ambitionlessness is something to embrace for a while.  We've been so goal-oriented our whole lives that maybe we need to let go of the goals, at least for a little bit, and coast, just see where the river takes us.  Sometimes, usually in the morning, that sounds wonderful.  Sometimes it sounds terrifying...especially at night.  I am one of those unfortunate people who has defined herself by what she does.  Maybe it's Americanness, maybe it's upper-middle-classness, maybe I can blame it on the way my parents raised me, maybe it's the "J" in my Myers Briggs type - whatever it may be, I like to have a clear sense of what the hell is going on in my life.

But, shockingly, I find myself at a point where I feel like I could do just about anything, with the exception of politics and finance.  If it will make us safer or more loving and won't require me to add, then sign me up.  What matters more is the salary, health insurance, a vacation package, a contained work day...and that it be on my metro or bus line.  The commute is seriously outranking the content right now.

Have I reached that level of toolishness that I am more invested in avoiding a metro transfer than the particulars of what I do all day?  Dear readers, I'm afraid to say I am.  Because my priorities are actually less and less focused on what I do for a living, and more and more on what I am able to do with the rest of my time.  I spent three years trying to get here - to be with my partner under the same roof, waking up in the same bed.  To be within driving distance of my parents and friends.  To be back in warmer weather, where sweet tea is the default tea and no one is from Suffolk.  To at last nurture my soul and my heart and my community more than my mind.

Goal-setting and goal-keeping was what made me being here and all of these beautiful moments possible.  It's hard to let go of something that I needed so desperately for so long.  Now that I'm here, I am afraid to waste this time, as if I've only earned it if I do something amazing with it.  But now I'm also beginning to realize that clinging so tightly to goals does not keep me from being a tool - as that much is pretty much assured no matter which path I choose - but it does serve to keep me afraid.  Since that is probably the most damaging way I could spend this precious time, I will settle for being a tool and striving, through fits and starts and falls along the way, to live and love as fearlessly as I can.