What am I even doing?

At the end of the last school year, I asked my seventh-grade students to write six-word memoirs. I was looking for an activity that would challenge them to capture who they were, at that moment in time, in as few words as possible.

There were several clever ones:

“I so very like hitting pars.”

“Sun-kissed skin, cool lake breeze.”

“Get your work done, be successful.”

But the relatability of this one stayed with me:

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Me neither, kiddo. Me neither. Does anyone? There are times when I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. Like when I’m being a teacher, or when I’m being a mom. Not that I don’t have moments of self-doubt, but mostly it feels like a flow state. I’m in a raft on a river, and sometimes there are boulders and rapids to navigate, but I’m in relationship with the water and not fighting against it. We move in harmony. And there are other people doing the same thing, and we help each other; none of us is in the river alone.

But being a writer is different. What does a writing life look like in practical terms? I don’t personally

know anyone who works full-time as a writer. Maybe that’s because of where I live, or the circles in which I move. Regardless, I don’t see any other writers on the river around me and I definitely don’t know what I’m doing. Instead of a flow state, it’s more of a “just keep paddling and maybe something amazing will happen” state.

I shared two of my own six-word memoirs with the students. One light:

“Lunch duty is a joy killer.”

And one heavy:

“My brother died. I’m okay now.”

The most said with the fewest words. My brother died almost thirty years ago, and everything that’s happened since has led me here to this place- a grown woman who loves her birthday, yet often forgets how old she really is, who has been so damn lucky her entire life that she thinks she might be able to make it as a writer. Who knows? It could happen . . .