Do We Really Need A Path?

The second week of the new year and I am a boat on the water without a North Star. It is making me restless, anxious, sensing I am failing in some way even though I am still afloat. Am I lost or merely delayed? Will the clouds part and I’ll find the stars are clear and know the path I need to take?

Do we even need a path to feel fulfilled and happy?

For as long as I can remember, I have had a path. Most of my life, my path was to be a working actor. Well, lately, that is even harder to come by than usual and while my passion for it remains, writing has taken the wheel. And, you guessed it, writing has a clean, paved path as well.

Whether we want to be actors or musicians or social workers or teachers or executives, others have laid these well worn paths out before us and we follow them.

Currently, I feel pathless. Not in a hopeless way but in a way that I want to explore. Since the world is constantly changing these last three years and moving at a breakneck pace, I no longer want to keep up. Like I wrote in my New Years post, I want to do things more for pleasure, for joy, for my soul.

I want to take the road less traveled.

I find when we have a structured path, if we lose our way or veer off of it, we feel like we’ve failed. I feel like I have failed at acting for no reason other than I haven’t performed in a minute and auditioning became frustrating last year more than it was exciting. I left the path for now and to me, that is a failure.

Yet it isn’t.

Who knows what is going to happen in the next week or month or year. I don’t feel like I am failing at writing but I am finding I am not following the structured path. I have gone back to writing for myself. I don’t want to write with the goal in mind to sell a book. Of course that is the goal but I just really like telling stories. Much like acting, when I return to it and I know I will, it will be for the stories.

My work is better because of it. I am better because of that. Going down the path covered with leaves that is quieter, still, filled with birdsong and dappled sunlight. It doesn’t feel lonely though it is emptier. It feels like taking my time. Enjoying the work. Feeding my soul in a different way.

I know many of us feel pathless right now. Nothing is certain and many of us have had our goals shift and change or even disappear entirely. But not having a path isn’t the worst thing. It opens you up to other possibilities, ones you may not have seen before. When I first started, I auditioned constantly for big movies and Broadway. It was when I started auditioning for smaller theater companies that I found lifelong friends and rewarding experiences while pursuing the big leagues. When I stepped away from auditioning, I found writing, I found my two novels, I found my voice. When I moved to back Vermont briefly, I discovered I needed the pulse of the city and the possibility and variety of a metropolis to thrive and be happy.

It is about risks and change and not giving up hope when your path disappears. I feel like I’ve failed constantly but I have merely shifted course. The North Star still leads me except it is in another direction. One where I will discovery things I didn’t realize I wanted or needed and I will find things that one served me no longer do.

I am finally considering what I want outside of my well laid path.

I’m going exploring.