My future is super-vague after grad school, and I've never had any career goals. I'm not sure where to go next.​

Dear E. Jean: I know I'm only a mere 23, and my whole life is ahead of me to experiment, but I've recently had the horrible realization that once I get my master's degree in communications at the end of this summer, I can do anything. ANYTHING. The future is super-vague, but the message that I got growing up was always "you can do anything."

That's a scary word for me. You see, I haven't really had career goals or dreams. I've just dabbled in different creative arts, and I don't particularly shine at any of them. The only thing I do know is that I don't want the same job for the rest of my life. So the prospect of doing "anything" is overwhelming. Where do I start? How do I start? —Ugh


Miss Ugh, My Duck: I read your letter. At first I was so petrified with delight I was unable to move for several moments. Then, with tears of joy, I jumped up and screamed: "YEEEEEeeeee gods! This young lady can doanything! What timing! What luck! She can come pave my driveway! She can save the elephants! She can fill the U.S. Senate with 87 percent women! Bah! Hillary Clinton is nothing compared to this chick! This girl will win the Nobel Prize in Literature! While at the same time annihilating racism and baking cakes without calories! Fantastic! Stupendous! Miss Ugh can do anything and so she can answer her letter herself!"

Epilogue. Then I sat back down. Though you can do anything, and though my own mother, the comely Liz Carroll—who's currently refraining from a second marriage the better to indulge her lusty flirtations with numerous admirers, and who was born before women could vote—pounded into my 13-year-old head (covered in brush rollers as large as coffee cans) that "women can do anything," it's a stretch. So here's the deal: Though you can do anything, you can't do everything.

You must pick. But you're banging into new people and ideas and constantly reacting and changing, right? Therefore, if you select a future career based on who you are now—a young woman in such a muddle that she signs her letters "Ugh" (and not the person you are continually becoming)—you'll probably choose something that strikes terror in your future self. Therefore, as you must begin somewhere, begin by picking not a career, but a trajectory. I've read your tweets; you've got writing talent and pizzazz. You mentioned "the creative arts." Go in that direction. And stay open to the shifts that make life so gloriously unpredictable. Get smarter by putting in the effort and practice in the first jobs you try. The best part? You've been "dabbling." And dabbling is the best way to get into the flow of possibilities. There. You see? You've been answering your own question all along.