What to do?

All my life I had a direction. It was always to graduate, to go on to the next tier of education. But now, on the eve of my final one, I don’t know what the hell to do. Where do I go from here? It’s not even a desire to stay on and go higher. I don’t particularly like it at school anymore—it all seems so fruitless, but maybe that’s just a consequence of majoring in English and writing. So, I leave, degree in hand, and where do I go, what do I do? What does anyone do?

I guess get a job, and then? Work. I really took it for granted that the course for the future is always so obvious—learn, keep going, do well (though that’s not always the case) and then: gratification. But I just don’t see it, there is nothing really gratifying about earning a degree. I suppose I’m just spoiled. So many people have no access to an education and when I get one I complain and ramble on and on about a lack of direction and ambition.

Nonetheless, I feel like I’m going to end up in a dead end job with no career, working just to fill a void—have something to do. There is nothing I really desire except new experiences, but that is such a vague desire that it’s almost inconsequential. I feel trapped with the prospects for my near future. Is this how everyone feels at this time in their lives? It seems like so many people have a dream they want to fulfill, but what if you have no real dreams?

It doesn’t seem like my dreams were ever shattered or broken. No catastrophic event in my life ever ruined them. I didn’t finalize my fate with vice. Instead they evaporated leaving behind an unpleasant residue. One day I woke up and ahead of me there was no dream, no nightmare—just a gray monotonous landscape of shit. I am at a loss.

The final anomaly is that I am not depressed. I like who I am. My life might not be the the most desirable, but it goes. What I don’t know is where it’s going from here. I am a lizard wandering alone in a vast desert. Is this what the rest of it will be–a long march toward a grave across a barren landscape shrouded in the lengthening evening shadow of youth?

I hope not.