This one’s for the people who’ve never had a clear answer to the question:
“What do you want?”
Maybe you’ve watched other people seem so sure. The ones who knew their dream job since childhood. Who found their person and just… knew. Who move through life with a kind of certainty that feels like a foreign language you never learned.
And maybe you’ve sat across from well-meaning therapists, friends, parents, partners—all of them waiting for you to articulate some vision, some goal, some direction—and felt that familiar panic rise.
Because you don’t know.
You genuinely, deeply, honestly don’t know what you want.
I’ve been there. I live there sometimes still. And I’ve learned a few things about this particular kind of confusion that I wish someone had told me sooner.
The First Thing to Know
Not knowing what you want is not a character flaw.
It’s not laziness. It’s not indecisiveness. It’s not a failure of imagination or ambition or drive.
Sometimes it’s protection. Sometimes it’s a sign that you’ve spent so long surviving that you never got to practice choosing. Sometimes it’s because the things you were taught to want never fit, and you’re still unlearning someone else’s blueprint. Sometimes it’s just… where you are right now. A season of not-knowing. A necessary pause.
Whatever the reason, you’re not broken for feeling this way.
You’re just in the fog. And fog, it turns out, is not the same as being lost.
A Story About the Fog
I spent my mid-twenties in a state of near-constant confusion.
Graduated college. Got a job that felt like wearing shoes two sizes too small. Left it. Got another. Same fit. Left that too. Started freelancing because I didn’t know what else to do. Made almost no money. Watched friends climb ladders while I wandered through rooms, opening doors, closing them, opening others.
People kept asking: “What’s your five-year plan?”
I wanted to scream: “I don’t have a five-hour plan!”
I thought something was wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to have a map. I had a compass that just spun in circles.
Then one day, an older woman I barely knew said something I’ve never forgotten.
We were at a dinner party. She asked what I did. I gave my usual rambling, apologetic answer—the one that tried to explain away my lack of direction before anyone could judge it.
She listened. Nodded. Then said:
“You know, some people are born knowing what they want. The rest of us have to wander until we find it. And the wandering isn’t wasted. It’s how we learn to recognize the thing when it finally shows up.”
I almost cried at the table.
Not because she gave me a plan. Because she gave me permission to not have one.
What Wandering Teaches You
If you’re in the fog right now, here’s what might actually be happening:
You’re gathering data.
Every job you try, even the wrong one, teaches you something about what you don’t want. Every relationship, every class, every city, every experiment—it’s all information. You’re building a internal database of “not this” so that someday, when “this” shows up, you’ll recognize it.
You’re shedding shoulds.
A lot of what we think we want is actually what we were told to want. The fog is where those borrowed dreams go to die. And that’s not loss—that’s clearing. You can’t fill a cup that’s still full of someone else’s water.
You’re learning to trust yourself.
This is the big one. When you don’t have a clear external map, you have to develop an internal compass. You have to listen to the quiet nudges. The “that felt good” and the “that felt wrong.” The yeses and nos that have nothing to do with logic and everything to do with instinct.
The fog is where intuition is born.
What to Do While You Wait
If you’re in the not-knowing, here are a few things that might help:
Stop asking “what do I want?” and start asking “what feels okay right now?”
Not forever. Not for your whole life. Just right now. What feels okay? What feels slightly better than something else? What feels like a tiny yes, even if you can’t explain why?
Follow curiosity, not passion.
Passion is loud and rare. Curiosity is quiet and everywhere. What are you slightly interested in? What makes you pause? What do you find yourself googling at 2 AM? Follow that. It doesn’t have to be a career. It just has to be a thread.
Take the pressure off.
You don’t have to figure out your entire life. You just have to figure out the next step. And the next step after that. And eventually, you look back and realize you’ve walked a path without ever seeing the whole map.
Give yourself permission to change your mind.
What you want at twenty-five might not be what you want at thirty-five. That’s not failure. That’s growth. You’re allowed to outgrow things. You’re allowed to want different things. You’re allowed to not want anything at all for a while.
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
If I could go back to my fog-filled twenties, here’s what I’d whisper to that confused girl staring at the ceiling at 3 AM:
You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re not doing it wrong.
You’re just in the part of the story before the path appears. And that part is necessary. That part is where you become someone who can walk the path when it finally shows up.
The fog will lift. Not because you forced it. Because fog always does.
And when it does, you’ll be standing in a landscape you recognize—not because someone drew you a map, but because you wandered every inch of it yourself.
A Gentle Invitation
If you’re in the not-knowing right now, here’s what I want you to do:
Put your hand on your chest. Take a breath. And say this out loud or just whisper it to yourself:
“I don’t have to know yet. I just have to stay here. And staying here is enough.”
Because it is. It really is.
The fog is not your enemy. It’s just where you are right now.
And you’re not lost. You’re just becoming.
P.S. What’s one tiny thing you’re curious about right now? Not passionate about—just curious. I’d genuinely love to know.
