
Welcome to Your Quarter Life Crisis - apwalker
http://www.eyeweekly.com/print/article/55882
======
physcab
This article is the story of my life right now. I am 25. I am living the
quarter life crisis. What makes this article hilarious though is that it is so
_true_.

Yes, its a selfish, narcissistic feeling. But in my defense it was how I
survived college. Society pressures you to think selfishly because when you
are in undergrad all you think about is "I need to get a high GPA to get into
a good grad school" or "I need good grades to land a good job" or "I need a
good job to pay off my debt" etc etc. It's all me me me!

No one pushes you to think about others. No one forces community service upon
you. No one tells you to go serve the homeless. These are all things that are
_essential_ to gaining a full perspective of life, yet there is almost no one
encouraging you to follow that untraveled path.

My mom recently had good advice for this quarter life crisis, even though we
didn't refer to this feeling as such. She said, "Life isn't clean." There is
no route to success, no chemistry for happiness, no direct path to relaxation.
We are all meant to encounter these feelings because that is just how life is
and that is how we learn what we _truly_ want.

~~~
mannicken
I agree. Earning money and respect pretty much by definition requires you to
think about others. Reduced to bare fundamentals, to make money you need to
think about what other people want and give it to to them because money is a
very abstract paper definition of "what people want from each other".

People think "oh, to earn money I have to go to college" or "I have to go get
a job". The more important point is: people don't fucking give a shit about
whether you want to college or not. If you can give them nice software, food,
pornography, or luxury items so they can show off they _will want_ to pay you
a lot of money.

------
branden
This article is a treasure trove of narcissism and self-pity. I don't mean
that to be criticism; I think it's an accurate depiction of the malaise that
comes from having nothing truly important to worry about. I recognize a bit of
myself in it.

~~~
martythemaniak
I'm sorry but that is nothing but a bunch of ignorant hand-waving. Whenever
something like the quarterlife crisis is brought up, there is a strong current
of thinking that goes something like "These people should just get over
themselves"

Fact is, there are a number of huge factors working against young people these
days. Consider the following:

\- You can't get a decent job without a decent education. It used to be that a
highschool graduate could get a job that paid enough to support a family, a
concept that is completely absurd these days. Kids these days are finishing
school _much_ later than their parents, and they don't have a choice.

\- the cost of school is sky-rocketting, as it debt.

\- A rapid climb in income inequality over the last generation (check the
historical gini index for reference) means that there aren't very many
quality, well paying jobs available to young people.

\- young people will be stuck with the bill to clean up the fucking mess we're
going through right now AND pay for the retirement and medical care of the
people that have brought about this shit-storm.

The end result is, society has raised it's children with the wrong set of
values, with policies that screw them over and now tries to wash it's hands
clean by essentially saying that the stupid kids should have seen it all
coming when they were pre-pubescent teens and manouvered around it.

~~~
heed
Not just that, but there is so much social pressure and expectation that
pushes you along through highschool, through college without much promotion
toward the alternatives. Never once did I think or hear that I didn't have to
go to college, that I could learn some sort of trade or technical skill
instead. I blindly followed my nicely laid out path with little objection, and
in a way feel robbed, though realize it ultimately my fault.

But what's really depressing is that I can't complain, at all. I am so lucky
to have this life, these opportunities, but it is totally despairing to be
aware of just how narcissistic and selfish it is to be able to have a
'quarter-life crisis. The fact is though, these feelings of despair exist, and
for valid reasons.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
The fact that someone else has it worse doesn't make your feelings any less
real.

~~~
sneakums
Group hug!

------
shaunxcode
Guess I'm even more glad that I dropped out of high school, started hacking,
played in bands, lived/worked in europe for a few years, came back to the
states and now work full time from home for clients and my own start up. Maybe
I hit my quarter life crisis in 9th grade but I realized what my culture
offered me after school was over appealed about as much sitting in school
waiting for it to be over.... Maybe all the stereotypical hardcore/straight
edge lyrics about "taking control" of your life actually hit home for me - but
regardless I actually love my life at 27 - know where I've been, know where
I'm going and only regret that it is passing so quickly.

~~~
justin
Congrats

------
planck
Newsflash: Twenty-somethings with no ambition will eventually realize that
they have no ambition and will get sad. :-(

There, I just saved you 10 minutes of reading the article.

~~~
abstractbill
There's a difference between ambition and direction. I think many twenty-
somethings have a lot of ambition, and no idea what to apply it to. I know I
did at one point.

Not being a twenty-something any more, I'd say I now think it probably almost
doesn't matter. Pick _something_ , and work hard at it for a long time.

------
arram
Durkheim wrote about this more than a hundred years ago. It's called Anomie.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie>

~~~
csbartus
So it seems the Quarterlife Crisis is nothing new, it was with generations
before and it will be in the future. The good news are if others solved we
will handle too.

In plus, in a similar way we both had a childhood crisis too, I can sharply
remember when I was 10 I had the very sad feeling something very good ended
and will never come back.

More, as the article says we are heading to the Midlife Crisis after we will
solve the Quartelife.

So there is no crisis at all, it's just the human nature, the way life goes
on. I'm firmly convinced we are not living just one life but many-lives-in-one
separated by such crises. The only common thing in these lives -- even the
body changes! -- is the presence of the same Observer accounting all life
periods.

Personally I'm enjoying these crises: there are so many things out there no
one should stick to just one lifeform. Yes you are free to do whatever you
want unless you are constraining yourself with the TIME.

~~~
jimbokun
"In plus, in a similar way we both had a childhood crisis too, I can sharply
remember when I was 10 I had the very sad feeling something very good ended
and will never come back."

I distinctly remember a very similar feeling in my childhood. I specifically
remember realizing I would have to give up daydreaming about superheroes,
comic books and play acting long adventure arc narratives with my friends that
could span multiple days.

Here's the ironic thing: the top grossing movies over much of the past decade
have been about super heroes, receiving much critical acclaim and attended by
millions of unembarrassed adults, written and directed mostly by men about my
age.

Which just goes to show, maybe not everyone gave up their childhood
imaginations and fantasies, after all. :)

------
mynameishere
_1\. You make an impulse purchase. It’s_ ... _c) your fifth beer on a Monday
night._

Umm, what if I bought it deliberately a couple days ago?

Anyway, there's nothing new about this. At the age of 25, men and women should
both be in the process of child-rearing. Deviate from that and nature will
send you signals that something is wrong. But the money and luxury of the
modern world allow this unnatural state.

<http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/wolfe_me.pdf>

 _The new alchemical dream is: changing one's personality—remaking,
remodeling, elevating, and polishing one's very self... and observing,
studying, and doting on it. (Me!) This had always been an aristocratic luxury,
confined throughout most of history to the life of the courts, since only the
very wealthiest classes had the free time and the surplus income to dwell upon
this sweetest and vainest of pastimes_

~~~
jimbokun
"Umm, what if I bought it deliberately a couple days ago?"

Then it would not be an impulse purchase.

------
mr_luc
I just read that, and laughed.

I live in South America, doing volunteer work nearly full-time, with a group
of expat friends and a much larger extended family of local friends ... I come
back to the states to work for 3 months out of the year.

(Yes -- I work only 1 week in 4. I do a lot of surfing down here. )

I don't want to sound smug, but I want to say that the malaise described is
not inevitable. I got out when I was 23 or so, and I feel like I've managed to
dodge a bullet. Starting my third year of my new life, and I can't imagine
being any happier. And my imaginator is in working order.

~~~
martythemaniak
Mind if I ask what exactly you volunteer to do? I tired of my current life and
have been wanting to go away, but have not thought of what to actually _do_ if
I do go away.

~~~
mr_luc
Heh.

Well.

I realize that I am going to immediately accrue a massively un-hackerly stigma
by posting this, but what the heck, it's true:

I'm a missionary for a small and fairly unpopular religion.

The __what to do __part is the most personal part of escaping, and the part
that determines if it'll be an episode or a part of your life going forward.
So it shouldn't be surprising if there's very little transference between
people. ;)

I guess I'd say the goal most people would like to set, regardless of how they
will personally get there, is to dedicate themselves to improving lives. Yes?
(We can even avoid Ayn Rand trolls by saying "lives", not "the lives of
others")

How you'll go about doing it would be your thing. It's important that you be
pretty darn convinced of the importance of doing whatever you escape to do.

I guess there are plenty of other reasons to escape. Ramen profitable, meet
Plantain Profitable. I spent $7 for food this week, and I ate like a king
(tilapia, fresh veggies, etc).

A startup that was __really __committed to being a cockroach could survive
down here with an angel invester that worked at a meat packing plant.

~~~
wallflower
> is to dedicate themselves to improving lives.

I believe improvement is something that is uniquely personal (e.g. to split
hairs, the person is responsible for their own improvement and growth).

However, I believe adding value to the larger community by building something
people want is along these lines, yes?

------
johnnybgoode
A lot of this comes from being lied to their whole lives. How many of these
people were told (in many different ways, some subtle, some not) while growing
up that school and college and grad school were important and the key to a
meaningful life? Sorry, but in reality, there is no universal shortcut to
having a meaningful life. There was nothing special about the structure you've
gotten used to in two decades of schooling. You have to accept this and move
on. This part of the crisis has gotten much worse in the last half-century or
so -- the unquestioned faith many middle-class urbanites now have in schools
and colleges.

------
mhb
For a much more entertaining version, rent "Vicky Christina Barcelona" by
Woody Allen.

~~~
arakyd
It's funny you say that, because I watched that this weekend, and liked it so
much that I got a bunch of his movies. I enjoyed one or two more, then
realized that they're all the same: guy gets married, guy is unsatisfied, guy
cheats on his wife, guy decides not to leave his wife. That's the way all of
his "best" movies go, at least. But you're right, it's the same sort of thing:
permanent, vague dissatisfaction with what one has.

I guess I like them because I'm a twentysomething who's coming out of my own
quarterlife crisis. It really is pathetic, but the problem is that even though
you realize how pathetic it is while you're in it, you don't know what to do
about it, so the realization just makes it worse. Being a human being is so
fun sometimes. I guess that's why we have comedians like Woody Allen....

~~~
aristus
Try his movie "Zelig" if you want a meditation on fitting in. :)

------
100k
It has nothing to do with this article but I suggested the name "Quarterlife
Crisis" for my company's kickball team, and it stuck. Perhaps appropriately,
they did not win.

------
dickwad
good ending :)

He listlessly works through lunch, then goes to the bar after work to meet up
with some university friends, where they talk about their jobs and make ironic
jokes about other people. Back at home, he wonders why he feels so gross and
empty after spending time with them, but it’s mostly better than being alone.

good description of my slightly younger hipster sorta-friends lol

------
dawie
I have lots of friends that are feeling the pain of a courter life crisis and
I sometimes feel a bit of it too. I question myself with things like: Why have
I not started my own startup yet? And I am really happy in my life and my job.

------
stevenbedrick
Crikey. And I thought that baby-boomers were self-obsessed and whiny... I
guess their kids are even worse.

------
mechanician
Lovely.

