Today we have a guest post from our good friend Jo Saxton. This is part one of a two-part series. Enjoy!
Well apparently it really is a thing. There are books and blogs, coaching opportunities and conferences, all about how to engage with or get through the chapter known as the Quarter Life Crisis.
The world Dictionary describes it as
quarter life crisis (ˈkwɔːtəˌlaɪf)
— n
a crisis that may be experienced in one’s twenties, involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one’s life
The Urban Dictionary has a great description that concludes
Basically, you wake up one morning and think to yourself, “Man – I’m totally screwed.” You then proceed to consolidate your debt, look for a better job, and spend more time sleeping – because when you’re asleep, you don’t have to worry about how screwed you are.
The Quarter life crisis is said to describe a stage in your twenties ( some studies suggest even into your thirties) where you look at the quality and the direction of your life, your job, your money, your relationship. And your dreams and expectations collide with your daily reality. For some that collision is dizzying, invigorating and fun. =Love! Job! Home! Money! For others ( and lets be candid here, for all of us at some stage or another – event if it’s just for a day) the collision is like the worst migraine ever, or a huge panic attack, that won’t leave.
Love? Well I thought it was going to work out , but clearly they don’t feel the same.
Job? I didn’t expect to get the dream job immediately, but I didn’t expect to wait so long, it to be so hard or to be so stuck in the job I’m in.
Home? My parent’s basement. Or the not quite yet re-gentrified part of town.
Money? You mean debt right? A lot of it. A whole lot.
Back then I didn’t know what a quarter life crisis was, or even if it really existed, but I think that was what was happening when I broke down in confused and angry tears on a late night walk sometime in my twenties. My tear streaked face really made no sense. My night had the perfect backdrop for the young urbanite that I was, as I walked along the London embankment, looking at Big Ben and the London city scape. This place was my home city, everything so familiar. So why did I feel so lost and adrift and yet so stuck at the same time?
I felt lost because I’d run out of plans. I realized how much had been determined for me. I’m not from the kind of background where everything was paid for, and provided for me. Quite the opposite. But still everything had been determined; school, then more school, then college. Those worlds provided my friends and my interests. But school was done, years exploring my future options was done Basking in people’s comments about my potential was over. I couldn’t afford to have potential , I had to live. And honestly I was scared to. It was my life, my responsibility, I couldn’t blame my school or my prof . Even blaming my socio-economic background was getting old. Even if the blame was valid – it was still my life to change. The past didn’t care, did it? I had to make some decisions. And for some reason, it wasn’t that I had to decide to take some risks that scared me so. Making some decisions felt like a risk….
I’m a Christian, so prayer was rather useful at this point. It was an ugly cry prayer; snotty, unintelligible and raw, quite possibly a little self-indulgent. But hey, it’s all I had.
So I sat on a bench and I listed all the things I wanted to have in my life by the time I was 30. I knew my dreams would change (when I was 5 I wanted to be wonder woman) but that I needed to start somewhere. And like a typical over achiever the list was long… but the regular stuff you know
I wanted to travel the world.
I wanted to meet a man I could love for the rest of my life.
I wanted a job with purpose that I could believe in…
The list gave me focus, intentionality, and the guts to work towards, chase after and own the life I had and the life I wanted. There were mid-course corrections along the way, because I had to keep the discipline of living realistically whilst reaching for dreams. It gave me back my grit, and it made me prepared to sacrifice. It was hard work and costly, but my life was mine again.
It’s about 20 years since that night. So many dreams fulfilled, along with plenty of heartache. So much achieved, but so much still to learn and discover. Life, really.
And yet the turning point was not my college graduation, or my first pay packet, or even that unexpected first date. It was the night I stared my quarter life in the face and chose to make decisions that I would live by, because making a decision and getting it wrong was better than spending my days adrift, or being stuck. Indecision would no longer be my decision
Is the quarter life crisis a thing? Or just a bad day?
Either way …. Face it and choose to work through it.
It’s your life, after all.
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Have you had a quarter life crisis? What challenges have you faced or are you currently facing?
Author Bio: Jo Saxton is a Director of 3DM and Equipping Director at North Heights Lutheran Church. Follower her on Twitter @JoSaxton.
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Photo by muffinn
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No quarter life crisis. But I certainly had a third life crisis. That’s how the Fiscal Flamingo came to be. Good things come from evaluating (and reevaluating and reevaluating some more) your life journey.
I don’t think its a thing, its reality and am smack in its middle so the post couldn’t have come at a better time. There are just so many questions that do not have answers, you feel like your life is going into twenty different directions at once, you wonder whether you are doing the right thing and whether in hindsight you will regret or be happy about it. You are point-on in your assertion that one oughta stamp their foot and face life boldly and I will sure benefit from your experiences. Thanks for sharing.
I guess you can call it a crisis, I left my job, dumped the BF, relocated to Morocco and then traveled for a year or so. Now I settled down again so let’s say it’s over! Thankfully the finances were and still are ok.
I don’t really think it was a crisis for me, though it was too long ago to remember. ;) I was in the middle of getting my debt knocked out and meeting my wife, so it wasn’t all bad. :)
I’m pretty sure that Greg is having a quarter life crisis right now…except a little bit late since he just turned 34. I think it’s normal to look around and question if you’re doing things right from time to time.
I guess I’m having a quarter life crisis right now. I plan on leaving my job within the next month (WOOHOOO!) and life has been changing like crazy.
Well most of us in our life would have experienced quarter life crisis. You really need to realign yourself with your life goals and start working towards achieving it. You definitely feel desperate on what is happening around you be it job, love life or many more things. Facing it with the right approach is the best way to handle this crisis
I think I am having the crisis right now because I have been thinking a lot if I made the right choices in many things and also worried about how everything will affect my future.
I did! And, now I can finally (at 31) say that I have a very clear direction with my career and life…though, I’m still waiting to meet the man of my dreams and travel the rest of the world!!
I don’t think I ever did.I had a pretty concrete path from early on probably due to the fact that I was faced with a lot of crap growing up. I knew what I didn’t want so did what I had to avoid it. It cost me a crapload money though so now I’m faced with the Debt but I have the education that will pay for said Debt.
I had a quarter life crisis as I was in grad school taking on a lot of debt, and I had doubts as to whether I wanted to be in that profession…and whether the student loan debt would be worth it. I’m now moving on to a third-life crisis! haha j/k. I think that my path is pretty clear now, but there are definitely more stress as you get older and start a family, etc.
There’s nothing more unsettling than knowing you are not at a place in life where you want to be (even if you don’t know where you even really want to be!). A crisis can occur at any time really. For me, I’ve been in chronic crisis mode for years now. We spent that past 3 years battling over $140k in debt and we’ve paid it off (which is awesome, of course). But now we’re essentially starting at ground zero and that’s tough when you are in your low 30’s and starting a family.
I guess you could say I’m having one now if I plan on living to 160, but I’m going way past 80, so it’s certainly not mid-life. I think it can be a good thing if it makes you re-evaluate your path and if you’re headed in the right direction.
I’m going through one right now. I am not where I’d like to be at the moment. I blame a bit of Facebook for this though. I see a lot of friends who just got their doctorates or are getting married or even having kids and I’m still living at home and trying to get into grad school. Even though I am at a job I LOVE, I also don’t make very much so financially I feel stuck espectially since I’m trying to become debt-free. I’m only 24 so I’m not sure why I feel like I’m supposed to magically have my life together especially given the state of our economy but I’m slowly getting there. A great book that I read on the subject is called Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties by Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner. I highly suggest it.
I’m in mine right now.
I think I am in the middle of a quarter life crisis as well. I did make a plan and I’m working the plan so hopefully this feeling will leave sometime soon.
I totally had a quarter life crisis. I ended up changing careers completely – from being a biomedical research assistant to becoming a software engineer. Haha… At the time, it was very stressful since I had to go back to school and basically start over. I’m super happy with how it turned out though!
Having crises in your 20s seems to be quite common, because you’re still quite young and just finished school. Everything seemed so structured when I was in university, it felt odd once I graduated. I wasn’t sure which path to take right away so I backpacked through Europe for a month before deciding what I wanted to do. I had more than one career change and even contemplated about going back to school at one point.
Come to think of it, you could have a crisis at any stage in your life. I’ve even heard the term “thrisis”, to describe having a crisis in your 30s.
I don’t think I had a crisis so much as a period of time where I was struggling to get my life in order, pay off my debts and figure out what I wanted to “be”. Thankfully I think that stage is over for the most part. I guess as makinthebacon says, I’m next due for my “thrisis”.
Yes, I am feeling like I am headed toward one now. I’m not quite at a quarter, but maybe it’s better it’s happening early? Hopefully I only have to go through it once. I am unhappy with how my career/job has been going, and my salary isn’t amazing, either. I feel overworked and undervalued, as they say. It’s not a happy feeling. I feel stuck right now, because I am waiting for my boyfriend to be ready for a promotion so that we can move. With a timeline of 5-7 months, it’s not really worth it for me to look for another job when I’d have to leave so soon after starting. So I just have to wait it out. I have a lot of hope for how things will go after that, at least.
I had a crisis on at 24…a bit early. I agree with you that this point is much more important than college graduation….i see my peers go onto grad school and delay the real world a bit longer…..some things they say force me to just nod and smile. I started making changes after my breakdown (like moving across the country) and I hope to make many more. Very well written.
I feel like I’m IN a quarter life crisis and have been fora year and a half or so. I think it all started when I found out I was getting laid off February of last year. It made me question everything – my career, myself, where I lived, even my relationship with my husband (who was my fiance at the time). Even a year and a half later, I haven’t quite figured it out.
I define myself so much by what I DO for work and I still haven’t figured out what my passion is. it makes me feel completely lost and knowing how precious our time here is, it gives me an added layer of pressure to figure it all out NOW.
I had my quarter life crisis out of college and I felt lost. I think it’s important to find something like you had, to keep you in check, whether it’s therapy, your house of worship, prayer, friends, family, etc. Great post!