What do I want to do next? A Poem

I have been thinking a log about my work, career, teaching, learning, and accomplishing my PhD, all of which leave me wondering about my next steps. Perhaps this is (not) helped with the creative juices in #CLmooc, but I still find myself asking what should I do for my next professional, personal, and academic steps?

Nothing like “What do you want to do when you grow up?” when I am already grown up.

That is what inspired this #clPoem.

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What do I want to do next?

What do I want to do?
I studied,
learned,
wrote,
presented,
published,
traveled,
made colleagues,
lost colleagues,
took,
gave,
and worked.
Now, what comes next?

Why is there even a next,
and not just a continuation?
Perhaps we are segmented
and put into little boxes,
or perhaps we put ourselves there?
This far in my career, if career is the right word,
I wonder what is next.
What do I want to do when I grow up?

Perhaps there is no answer as that is the wrong question.
How about, What do I want to do next?
That feels a better frame.
Onward and Upward.
More optimistic and future oriented.
It promotes building on what the rhizome has already begun.
Based on where I am and what I did.
Content and context.
It takes all before it as a not-so-perfect ladder,
one that always reaches ever forward.

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Seems there is not a right or wrong path, but better to think about it and choose the (a?) direction than just wait for one to appear.