part I: hello quarterlife crisis

“this is going to be the most confusing year of your life,” said one of my friends at the beginning of this summer. boy was she right. it’s as if i have been riding on a train that has suddenly come to a halt after twenty-one years of motion. maybe the tracks just abruptly ended. maybe a fellow passenger pulled the emergency breaks. or maybe the conductor, after guiding me for over two decades, has decided that my free ride is over. did my ticket expire? whichever the case, i have officially been booted off the train (figuratively speaking of course) and left with the task of laying my own tracks.

these past four months i have felt like nothing is really wrong, but nothing really feels right either. my parents are truly wonderful, but i can’t function as a wholly independent being while under their roof. the town in which i live in is exactly the kind of place i can see myself raising a family in, yet that’s certainly not on my list of priorities right now. to tell you the truth, it frightens me a little to have fallen in love with this town because it encompasses too much of what i want my adult life to have. in other words, it’s almost as if my environment is prematurely making me into the person i want to be in my late twenties or thirties. this is what frightens me and motivates me to move somewhere else. of course, leaving this college town for another will have its downsides as well as upsides, as is the case with most all decisions in life. but i can see that i am getting a little sidetracked here...let me return back to the point i was making about how my post-graduate life has been a period of continual confusion and apprehension (fun stuff, huh?).

christine hassler, author of “20 something, 20 everything”, introduced me to the term “quarterlife crisis”. what an ingenious way to describe it. according to the book, this phrase has been around since the early nineties but has recently caught on as more and more twenty-somethings share their experiences. hassler writes that quarter-lifers feel the pressure to make their twenty-something years the time when everything needs to be decided. i couldn’t agree more with this sentiment. since graduating college i have felt overwhelmed by how diverse my interests are. hotel management, starting a cooking class for kids, being a sports publicist, working for a large design company, being a swimsuit designer...the list goes on and on. i don’t want to be a “jack of all trades, master of none,” but i also want to lead a stimulating, multi-dimensional life. how can my life have direction if i’m constantly considering all directions? the following is an excerpt from her book that i think sums everything up:

“our twenties are a turning point in our lives where we feel pressure to do, well, everything. As the security blankets of college and parents are peeled away, we are faced with finding jobs, building careers, perhaps moving to new cities, separating from our old support systems, taking care of our own finances, dating, marriage, thinking about children, starting families, making our first large investments, creating new social lives, watching our parents grow, and shaping an identity to last the rest of adulthood.”

okay, i’m thinking the same thing you are: that is a shitload of responsibility. i don’t remember being braced for these pressures the same way i was braced in high school for what to expect from my college years. is there some kind of pact among parents and educators that i’m not aware of? well, i really can’t complain too much, because what you learn from your own mistakes and experiences is the most valuable kind. your parents can tell you a thousand times to be careful with knives, but until you slice your own finger you don’t fully grasp the reality of the situation.

once we realize that we don’t have to put all this pressure on ourselves to accomplish everything we want to accomplish in our twenties we can begin to gain some much needed perspective (and peace of mind). think of all the stories you read about people well into their forties and fifties who change their careers, start their own businesses, or simply embark on adventures that they’ve always yearned to do. these should remind us that we are continually growing and learning with age and yes, there is life after 30! we belong to a generation that grew up being told, “you can be anything you want to be.” surely there is no hidden asterisk stating that the window of opportunity only applies to your twenties.

if you take anything away from this post, i hope it is a sense of relief after acknowledging that you are not alone in your quest to be superwoman (or superman). we twenty-somethings share a unique set of questions, expectations, and pressures that don’t need to consume our everyday thoughts. i think we get caught up in thinking so much about the future and forget to live in the present. remember fretting over homework in middle school, finals and presentations in high school, and mid-terms in college? remember thinking that the major and minor you chose actually had the power to define who you were and what you were going to be? was all that worrying really worth it? definitely not. life is fluid, and we’d all be a bit happier if we worried less and adopted the mantra that everything will work itself out. if you have a strong support network and a positive sense of self, i see no reason why you shouldn’t be putting more faith in your capabilities. easier said than done, but we can all work on it. so put your mind at rest: you can have it all, but you don’t have to have it all now. besides, last time i checked, i don’t think there were any superhero positions available at this time (blame it on the economy).