I need a mentor

The other day I went to the library to look at the US News & World Report rankings of grad schools. I'm seriously considering going to grad school in 2006, or possibly 2007, but the only people I've told are two of my closest friends and the woman at the reference desk in the library. I looked at it for a while, and then looked through the Peterson's guide, and thought, this is not useful.

I don't need a reference book. I need a mentor. I need someone who's older than I am, who understands my situation (where I'm coming from, how I approach decisions, my academic interests, the rest of my life) or at least thinks kind of similarly to me, who has more perspective than I do, and who is in a position to give me decent advice about what I should do. I don't know anyone like that. My parents kind of know my deal, but they so clearly have their own ideas of what my life should be like that I don't trust their advice; they also really don't understand me that well, which is fine. My friends are basically all my age, and have no clear perspective on this stage of decision-making because they're in the middle of it; on the other hand, they understand me pretty freakin' well. My professors are 3000 miles away, and they all obviously chose academia; the two I'm closest to might be able to help me think about what I want, but the one who probably seriously considered a non-academic life seems more like a peer than a mentor. My boss has never really considered going to grad school, and what he wants out of his life is totally different from what I want. I'm living with my grandmother, but if there was ever anyone whose advice I shouldn't take, it's her.

How do you find a mentor? How do you approximate one? I've tentatively decided that by the fall of 2006 I'll not only have a long-term plan, but be in the first stages of getting it done (i.e. going to grad school, or enrolled in a teacher certification program, or hired by some company or organization where I'd like to work for at least a couple of years). But I desperately need perspective outside myself on what grad school in the humanities-oriented social sciences is actually like, and what it feels like to be a professor, and so on. Whether the thing I would want to study is even an option in the field I think I'm interested in. What my alternatives are. Academic blogs are my distractor of choice lately, but they only tell me so much.