I’m going through a quarter life crisis. I’m about to turn 22, living on my own for the first time, roughly 6 months away from graduating college, and somewhere between holding onto and getting out of the most intense relationship of my life. I have no idea what I’m doing, what I want, how I feel or how to figure any of it out. You just seem to have it all so together – you’re so strong, independent and intelligent, and basically just a badass. Any advice on how to get my shit together like you?
Me? Have my shit together? That is an optical illusion created by the internet. I am in the same boat as you, my friend. Just when I feel I’ve secured a focused, motivated, positive outlook on life the wind blows and I lose it all. But then, that’s why this sentiment has a name: Quarter Life Crisis.
It is real, and I’d go so far as to say, more intense than a mid-life crisis. We are standing on the edge of the rest of lives, peering over a ledge, half fearing, half anticipating whatever lies at the bottom.
My only advice is there are multiple ways to the bottom (or, top I suppose, but I’m using a ledge metaphor so bear with). My current deity and life guru Beyonce just said in her documentary that examining your life is the only way to see how all the dots connect; because they do. That’s where keeping a journal and writing and blogging and dissecting my own head has really come in handy. I can look back through the years of utter teenage girl confusion and understand exactly how and why I came out on the other side the person I am right now.
Also, I feel like the more you do the more you know yourself. I rarely say no to anything. Whether it be a lunch date, a fishing trip, a yoga class, new food, new trends what have you. I want to do it all. I like the Jonathan Safran Foer quote; Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living. Read a bunch of shit. Whatever clicks deep in your gut is probably worth exploring further. But don’t rush. Because if you had yourself all figured out, what the hell would you spend the next seventy something years doing…?