The Quarter-life crisis won’t take me down
You might have heard of this one. The quarter-life crisis is a phase you go through somewhere in your twenties or as Wiki puts it “a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties.”
It’s a phase where all kinds of insecurities develop. Again, Wikipedia provides us with a nice list I’d like to share:
- feeling “not good enough” because one can’t find a job that is at one’s academic/intellectual level
- frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
- confusion of identity
- insecurity regarding the near future
- insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals
- insecurity regarding present accomplishments
- re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
- disappointment with one’s job
- nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
- tendency to hold stronger opinions
- boredom with social interactions
- loss of closeness to high school and college friends
- financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipated high cost of living, etc.)
- loneliness
- desire to have children
- a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you
There are a few here I confess suffering from. Although I don’t feel the need to have children I do feel “not good enough”, an underachiever and the sense that everyone is doing better than me. With one foot I’m in the adult life, after all, I’m 26. But on the other hand I’m going back to university this September and hopefully will be busy with that till I’m 30 something. In the mean time all the kids I grew up with are now engineers, run their own practice or are lawyers and have been doing so for a few years now. I feel left behind.
I know there are more people out there suffering from this. After all, there is a term for it right? We feel we missed the train somehow and got left behind.
Advantages of the slow life
But taking things “slow” in this way has offered me with a perspective few other have. I doubt anyone who by the age of 26 is fully tied up in a dayjob and a social life, perhaps even with kids would have a chance to break free from it all. Let’s just say I didn’t get suckered in when I was not fully conscious about it and now am in the position to choose if I take that step and settle down.
Yes there is a downside, my monthly income is laughable to anyone working full time. To anyone working actually… I don’t own a car, all I have is a motorcycle I bought for 200 euro’s and maintain myself. (If you’re wondering what a 200 euro motorcycle looks like, follow this link.) I don’t own a fancy laptop/macbook pro and I don’t run a highly successful business. I do however have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment. I have few obligations and if I want to get up somewhere around noon that’s just fine. Sure, I have gaps in my resume you couldn’t fill with a dumptruck but who cares. That damage has been done already. I’m not successful according to most people, I stopped being that as soon as I decided the first major I took in University wasn’t for me and I dropped out for the rest of the semester. It took me almost six years to complete my training as exercise therapist which should take only four years. Again, failure. (Or look on the bright side: persistence)
Crystal mind
You know what?! I actually don’t care about all that. Yes I suffer from a quarter life crisis but it’s not stopping me. It’s actually my source of strength. The ideas on what I want to do with my life are crystallizing perfectly inside my mind and I have concrete steps I know I have to take to make these things come true. Take that you soon-to-suffer-a-midlife-crisis-former-classmates! You might have that nice job right now and the nice car (did someone say Ferrari?) but I’ve got a life philosophy, I’m writing a bucket list and I’m setting up a freedom business. None of these are signs of success in the traditional sense so I’m also working on that master’s degree to rub in their faces and learning skills I deem essential to become a Location Independent Professional (or LIP for short). The rubbing in is only a nice benefit by the way, I really want to learn those skills.
I’m 26 and I’m ready to take on the world, on my terms!
How do you feel about your life? Please leave a comment, I’d really like to know.
[update 20090611] I just stumbled across a blogpost that seems to fit in nicely with this post “I am a failure – The Biggest lie out there” and I would really like to share with you. Got it through @scottbradley[/update 20090611]
That’s great Christiaan. I have a feeling many of those who “left you behind” might not have found their true pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As someone who is almost twice your age, I can tell you that those things just don’t do it for you in the end.
Exactly my point Stephen. Though there will always be people who are “more successful” than yourself you can’t let that influence you or you’ll be depressed your whole life.
I’m writing that bucket list at this very moment and perhaps I’ll post it on my blog to let everyone see I’m committed to doing all those things.
I didn’t believe my teachers in high school when they told us “these years will be he best of your life, but you won’t believe me until they have passed” A part of me believes him now, the other part believes that my life will be amazing within three years from now. It’s full of opportunity and promise and I’m excited to get started.
I’m working on my 1/2 life crisis as 50 is imminent. By any American standard of “success” I am a loser because I drive a $US1700 car, rent a small flat and am unemployed. But I’m far more happy and content than my peers who are killing themselves with work and are in constant terror of being sacked. I’m looking for a job — I even had a good interview yesterday — but unlike most people I can afford not to work for a long time and have a nice savings account.
Still, strangers don’t know that. Especially when driving, people in new expensive cars see my old car and immediately all common courtesy and road manners go out the window. Oh well, you go ahead as you’re obviously more important and special in your new Porsche Cayenne than I am in this old boxy Volvo. Grr.
Anyway, my defense against any feeling of being a loser or of being somehow a failure is thinking of how badly in debt most people are and how their lives are those of a mouse in a wheel being chased by the tireless cat of debt.
The beauty is that when you know the most effective techniques, it’s not about how much time, it’s how you spend it. The other beauty is that energy and passion can distort time in wild ways. You can move mountains in no time when you’re on a mission.
I think the quarterlife/mid-life crisis scenario is over done. It seems that most of the time it is more of a personal existential crisis of meaning; a moment where we start weighing the pluses and minuses of our life and see which side weighs more. Of course we see this through our own of rose colored glasses.
The midlife crisis should be renamed the Midlife Existential WTF? :P
As easy as it is, life success can not be measured by possessions and the bottom line. I like your focus on defining success for yourself and on your own non-conformist terms.
The thing about life is that you are always beginning. If you choose to ignore that each day is a choice, then the rut you are in owns you.
Clearly you don’t have the same criteria for sucess as some of your peers but who is to say that they are not looking at their lives and envying you.
I can totally relate. In high school, I was a total overachiever. I was the valedictorian of my class and received a full scholarship to college. (I was the first person in all of my family to even go to college.) Then, I moved 1,300 miles away from home to attend graduate school–also on scholarship. Somewhere during that time, I realized that I hate traditional advertising (what I now hold two degrees in). Since finishing my master’s, I have bounced from job to job, always getting bored after about six months and feeling completely lifeless and unfulfilled. It’s not that I’m lazy or stupid, I just don’t like doing mindless, pointless work for 8-9 hours a day to make someone else a bunch of cash. In the last six years, I have had 10 jobs (I am almost 29).
Most recently, I struggled with feeling like there was something wrong with me because I hated all my jobs. My father would constantly judge me for changing jobs all the time, and he insinuated that I wasn’t successful. And it seemed like all my friends from college were becoming partners in their firms, buying big houses, starting families, etc. Me? I was drowning in debt from student loans and feeling zero sense of accomplishment.
Then, I found LD. I’m so excited to finally feel like I’m not a failure–and that there are other people out there who don’t want to “work for the man!” It’s been a completely exhilirating experience to try to set up my freedom business. I am in the process of setting up multiple streams of income so I can start to be valued for the many things I know how to do–not just what I got a degree in.
I had been feeling myself like a failure for the past half decade. I am 23 now, and I start labeling myself a failure since the age of 17, when I start to lost control of myself.
But now I realized that I am not a failure at all when I stop comparing myself with people around me. I am who I am and I think I did my best all this while it is just that things didn’t turn out the way I aimed. There are lots and lots of ripples in my life. Maybe the time for me to perform has yet to come. Preparing myself for the day to come. (It arrived a week ago and I’m moved)
Everyone’s chance of success arrive at different time, some succeed at young age, some succeed late in life. You have to be patience for all the low point of life.
You are not a failure at all, because you know how to think for yourself, you know how to change, you know what to do, you know how to get things moved and you know what you want and don’t.
Yes, there are people who are doing much much better than us in life. Be happy for them, because they deserve it.
Stop comparing yourself with others and label yourself as a failure to clean up your mind.
Chris, don’t look forward to your life being amazing in 3 years, make it amazing now! I understand there is a process to get to where we want to be, but in the meantime we should strive to enjoy each day, even if we don’t have the financial means to acquire things or do expensive activities. I think you need to change your perspective, be proud and comfortable of where you are and the freedom you have, and measure yourself less in terms of cultural expectations.
A group of friends and I graduated college 3 years ago (in 4 straight years) in California, got good jobs in the bay area, and were making decent $, but it was not completely fulfilling. We just quit our jobs and will be travelling Europe and Asia. I have accepted that last year might be the most money I’ll make in my “career,” but it is ok as I am confident whatever I choose to do in the future will be more fulfilling.
The journey is the destination.
mongolrally.theadventurists.com/quarterlifecrisis