Quarterlife Crisis Hits Many in Late 20'
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Quarterlife Crisis Hits Many in Late 20'
| Thu, 04-21-2005 - 3:23pm |
I found this interesting. Read the article and tell me what you think.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Careers/story?id=688240&page=1


That was a good article.
I am 25 (will be 26 in a couple of months) and I feel my life is alot more diffrent then most 25 yr old women. I was 17 when I got preggo. So I didn't finish high school and I didn't get a GED. I have bben working since my daughter was 1 month old. (she is now almost 8 yrs old) I couldn't and wouldn't live off of welfare because it didn't pay enough and there was to much bulls*** to deal with it. So I went out and got a job waitressing 1 month after I had her. Well waitressing sucks, so I went to another job a a department store and got laid off. Well right after I got laid off I found the job where I work now. Let me tell you I got sooooo lucky with this job I have now. I didn't even know how to work a fax machine when I walked in on the first day of this job (I was 18) but after a couple of weeks I adjusted really well to an office job. I got promoted after 3mnths there to accounts payable/ accounts receivable, then I got promoted to purchasing/inventory manager and I still hold that title and now I am becoming the buyer for my company.
I make really good money I usually bring home after taxes and stuff a little over $400.00 a week and with not having a high school diploma no ged, or colledge education I think I got very lucky. And I am getting another raise in a couple of months. I live in Cleveland OH and what I make fits really good in the living standards here.
I have not lived with my parents since I was 16 and I have lived on my own alone with me and my daughter since I was 20. So I count my blessings and I apperciate all that I have because I know life could be alot worse. Actually I wouldn't even mind working at this job for the rest of my life. It's a great back bone and it's a very secure job, I enjoy my work and the people I work with.
-Michelle
I didn't read the whole article, sort of skimmed it ... but, as soon as I saw the subject line, I thought of one thing: Saturn Return.
Now, if anyone out there believes in or follows astrology ... you'll know what I'm talkin' about.
I'm an absolute fan of astrology. I've had my charts read every year since I was 27. Of course, I don't use it to plan my life out, but it offers amazing insight and guidance.
If you wanna read up on Saturn Return ... ie, what is pretty much the Quarter-Life Crisis and why that is, take a read on this short article:
www.newage-directory.com/saturn.html
I've heard a lot about the whole quartlife crisis thing lately... and I'm not sure what to make of it. Oddly enough, when I was in school, I had a lot of friends and we would talk about our plans for the future, and I was always suprised at how few of them actually had any plan at all... I don't know, but it sure seems to me that my peers are a bunch of slackers and whiners for the most part.
Maybe I am just weird, but I don't see what is so hard about growing up? Yes, I moved back in with my parents after I graduated school. I graduated in exactly 4 years, in May of 2004 and I moved back with my parents. But, I had my job lined up 6 months before I graduated and started it in June 2004. Since then I've been promoted and in March I bought my own house. I really just don't understand why none of my friends from school have been able to keep up. I mean, they are all at least as smart as I am, we all went to the same university and got really good degrees. A lot of my friends are too immature to hold a job, it seems.
On one hand I understand that it is really difficult to decide what it is you want to do with the rest of your life; I still don't know that myself. But, unlike most of my peers, I have gone out and started my life anyway. I work as an auditor. It isn't my "dream job" but it pays the bills and I have plenty of time outside of work to explore my other interests. I dream that someday I will leave the corporate environment and open my own interior design studio; and I am taking the necessary steps to do that while holding a regular, practical job.
I'm sure there will be plenty of 20-somethings out there who will disagree with me or think that I'm just really harsh, but I tend to think that the whole quarterlife crisis thing is an excuse. That's just my opinion, of course.
I have to say. I totally felt like I had one, although, not for the same reasons. I kinda lived my life BACKWARDS.
at 17 I was living at college, then at 18, I was living on my own. I got married at 23. Divorced at 25. Moved back home at 25. Graduated college at 27. Married and divorced that same year again. Still living at home. Moving out in a few weeks at 30.
So, as you can see, I'm a bit backwards. But at 25, I was already done with my marriage, moving out, living on my own. The ONLY thing I had left to do was graduate. lol. When I did that, and couldn't find a job, well, that's one reason I'm at home again. But moving out. Which will be nice. Now, if I could only find a CAREER, I'd be set. Maybe by 35-40 I'll have some crisis. lol
Oh I definately had a quarter life crisis. It started when I was almost 28 and ended about two years later.
I got really down on myself for not having accomplished all the things I wanted to. I wasn't at all in the place in my life I thought I would be in. I thought I'd have a greta job working ina lab and be a supervisor and making lots of money doing important gentic research. Instead I was starting over my career as a technical writer. I had JUST moved in with a boyfriend and gotten out of my parents house where I lived for almost two years after I graduated college.
High schoool had been easy for me and so had college. I thought I had been lucky, but I wasn't I had allowed myself to cost through my life for far to long. I had taken the past of least resistance far too long and didn't know how to cope when things didn't come naturally.
It wasn't becasue I wasn't smart or because I was lazy or immature. Okay maybe I was a little of all those things, but not a lot. My big problem was my life had had a plan I just hadn't realized it was someone else's plan. I hadn't bothered to figure out what MY plan was.
Well, it took almost two years and a whole lot of internal stuff to realize. I was fine. I dinn't even have to have a plan if I didn't want one rigth that second. I could breathe and relax and just enjoy my life and my less then stellar job and my less then stellar apartment. It was perfectly alright to NOT have all the answers and to not have any clue where I would be in 3 years let alone 10.
I knew what mattered most. Life could try to kick me down. People could try to make me be "realistic" about my dreams. People could be all uptight and ask me silly questions like, "Why aren't you married?" "Why haven't you bought a house?" "Why aren't you more successful?" "Why aren't you running around being stressed out and making yourself nuts trying to live the American dream and have it all like 'everyone' else?" It didn't matter, let those people worry about me and the things they though were important. I had my own plan.
I was going to enjoy life instead of stressing out and making myslef crazy about what I had and hadn't done. I was going ot be open to possibilities and to learn to love the life I have not the one I think I want. I was going to embrace what life offered me instead of trying to bend it and the people around me to my will. I was going to relax and live.
And I have and remarkably when I did all those things I had worried so mucha bout and other people had worried about just sort of started happening.
I ended an abusive relationship. I learned to enjoy dating. I bought a house. I decided I liked my job pretty well and that I was doing just fine with it until I did find my bliss and a way to pay the bills pursuing my bliss. I even found a great guy and I'm going to marry him in about six months.
There's a lot of truth to that Saturn Return thing. Being in my thirties is awesome I HIGHLY recommend it. I am soooo much happier and sooooo much less stressed. Coming out the other side of that quarterlife crisis was great!!!!! I wouldn't go back and change one moment of angst or struggle for what I gained from those struggles.
For those of you going through it now, hang on it's a bumpy ride, but you wind up so much better for those couple of tough years.
the thing that i think makes your late 20s difficult (i'm 26) is that you and your peers are all at such varied stages in your road toward adulthood. i have married friends. i have friends who are single and still having one night stands. i have friends with serious, demanding careers. i have friends who work 9-5pm just to get by. i have confident, satisfied friends. i have friends that feel lost.
it seems like my friendships and relationships have either grown or fallen apart based on whether we are in similar maturity/career/love stages.