Dear Digital Diary

Dear Digital Diary,

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

I feel like one day I was younger, and the adults would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I tended to cycle through the same ideas like being a veterinarian, a teacher, or a secret spy. The adults would then nod and say something about how it’s important to chase your dreams. 

Then one day, I woke up, post-grad with a writing degree. The adults are my peers now,  and nobody asks what I want to be anymore. They ask what I do. And what do I do? I wake up, sometimes I do a workout, I drink too much caffeine, I try to write but get distracted, I go to work at my part time tourist shop retail job, I drive home, I sleep, then I do it again. It’s what I do. 

But what do I want to be?

And a greater question, what happened to my dream?

I think I had one before college. I’d written a manuscript that I was passionate about and I got goosebumps every time I’d watch a film trailer. I wanted to tell stories, as stories have always been a point of connection between people, and I wished to be even a thread of that connection. 

I guess you could consider that a dream. 

But a dream isn’t always what you “do”. My dream is not to work in a retail shop dealing with miserable tourists while they ask me questions you can google. 

My dream wasn’t to go corporate, either. I was around that environment for years, locking in and out of that mindset that my college provided. A creative career should’ve been my dream. It should’ve been my dream to work at big publishing houses, to make films with popular production companies, to work on advertising campaigns for news stations. 

So when I graduated, and then lived another seven months after graduating without any prospects and a new hatred for cover letters, I began to wonder if I even wanted that at all. 

Which got me thinking about what I want. 

And how what I want should equate to my dream. 

But then I look at the news. About everything that’s happening in my hometown, the place I felt safe in that other people are increasingly more unsafe in. Humans acting as animals, hunting other people because of a superficial territory run by bigots and hypocrites. Christlike love became sadists wearing wings, and every Saturday presents another protest that I miss because I’m working at my tourist job. (The job in which I answer when asked what I “do”.)

People keep throwing out the word “animals” in relation to those who don’t hold a citizenship slip of paper that paints them red, white, and blue. And yes, humans are animals — scientifically that is. We all are. We share many traits and ways of functioning that can be seen in your neighbor’s dog, the deer in the backyard, or the cat zipping out of the room when you appear. 

But there is one thing that sets humans apart from animals: that is our network of communication, our complex language. With this expressive, symbolic language that has evolved over many cultures, we as humans have advanced thinking, future planning, and the capacity for moral reasoning. 

Essentially, we can put our thoughts into words. 

So what is my dream?

I’m still not sure. But I am sure that I’ll continue using the thing that separates me from your local predators: language, thinking, and moral reasoning. And maybe somewhere within that, I’ll find my dream, but for now, I can settle being a single thread that can connect one person to another.

Maybe, at the moment, that’s what matters most.