Welcome to Your Quarter Life Crisis

http://www.eyeweekly.com/print/article/55882

by apwalker • 17 years ago

114 62 17 years ago

branden• 17 years ago

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.

strlen• 17 years ago

I entirely agree with that: the problem is narcissism and self-pity; that has ramifications. Like you, I don't mean in an offensive way. It's fairly tragic and the sadness these people experience is real. People are pitying themselves so highly that they're actively hurting themselves. People are setting unrealistic expectations for themselves and are driving themselves to depression when they don't meet them.

E.g. if someone is unhappy with their job/their significant other, they should either re-asses their expectations/priorities and/or look for another (do you want high pay, or do you want greater flexibility? do you want a greater fulfillment, or do you want a strict 9-5 job with frequent vacations?).

Instead, the people described in their article (as well as many I've known) lament how it's impossible for them to find the perfect job/partner/residence and thus become depressed as they view themselves as not only unhappy in the present, but stuck in a world of perpetual unhappiness.

Just as there are architectural trade offs made when designing a computer system (do you want strong consistency, do you want low latency, do you want scalability? Pick two.), so there are in life.

martythemaniak3• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

patio11• 17 years ago

It seems to me that there are two audiences for the quarterlife crisis, and they're largely determined by selection of college major.

If you majored in something in Arts & Sciences which doesn't have a career attached, and then went to grad school in it (maybe a PhD) before figuring out that you have no marketable skills, you are now in your mid-to-late twenties, have a mountain of debt, and have no particular employment prospects.

If you majored something which a profession attached (engineering, foreign language with an eye towards actually using it to do more than order una cerveza por favor, etc), then you probably were employable in your early twenties and almost immediately a member of the middle class, without a crushing debt load.

I wouldn't exactly be the poster-child for "with it" in my father's generation but I came out of college with $20k in debt at the age of 22 with a job offer which paid very modestly, but better than working at a railroad or cereal company, both things my father had done at 22. Those aren't exactly ennui-inducing circumstances.

gnaritas6• 17 years ago

> You can't get a decent job without a decent education.

So, what makes you think a decent job is a right, because it isn't. Most people don't go to college, most people get low paying and/or manual labor or service jobs. Welcome to the real world.

> Kids these days are finishing school much later than their parents, and they don't have a choice.

They have every choice, they can choose to not bury themselves in debt to go to a school they can't afford. If you can't afford college, don't go.

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

See above.

> there aren't very many quality, well paying jobs available to young people.

Have there ever been? Really? C'mon, young people have always started at the bottom of the ladder and been shit on, overworked, and taken advantage of; that's how the system works, it isn't anything new.

Seriously, this all sounds like a bunch of rich white kid whining about how hard their life is (despite being full of choices most people don't even have)... you people should just get over yourselves, most people have it much harder. Most people don't go to college, most people hate their jobs, most people make shit wages and have little hope of ever making it.

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

"- You can't get a decent job without a decent education. "

Fibs. I have no "proper" or "decent" education and work as a tech lead. You just gotta work hard and find a way to stick out from the crowd. Thankfully with all the dossers in low rung jobs that isn't hard.

anamax• 17 years ago

> 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.

Inequality doesn't mean that there aren't quality, well paying jobs and equality doesn't mean that there are.

Inequality is a ratio. Ratios tell you something about the relationship between things, but don't tell you anyting about their absolute values.

Do you really want to say that you'd be better off if everyone was starving (gini=1.0) than you are with plenty of food, a computer, apartment, and so on because someone else can fly to Maui on a whim?

Envy is stupid. If you're unhappy, greed is your friend because it's not about what someone else has, it's about what you have. (Disagree? Compare the gini coefficient in any hell-hole to the coefficient in any place that you'd be willing to live.)

And, frankly, you've got it pretty peachy. Stop whining.

Oh, and another thing. Most jobs are shit and always have been. Dilbert has a better job than most folks. If you're looking for something to give your life meaning, get a pet.

jcromartie• 17 years ago

> You can't get a decent job without a decent education.

But you can get a decent job without expensive schooling. I'm sure many hackers here can attest to that. Not every kid needs to go to college, even in the service-sector economy.

fan• 17 years ago

"- 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."

The rise in income inequality is offset by the growth of average real income.

In fact, every point on the income curve has risen, at least in the US.

That is, if we compare the population 30 years ago to today, the real income is higher for the 10th percentile of lowest earners, the 20th percentile of lowest earners, etc.

Thus, its not harder to raise a family the same way today as 30 years ago -- people's standards have just heavily ballooned. "Raising a family" used to mean getting food in the door and clothes on your familys backs. Now it means a couple of sets of HD TVs, computers, barbeque grill, etc etc...

mechanician• 17 years ago

Lovely.

planck• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

potatolicious• 17 years ago

More correctly I think that 20-somethings with ambition, but no passion, will eventually realize they have no passion and will get sad.

I know lots of fellow recent-grads who are ambitious (in the "I want to be successful!" sense), but have no idea what success really entails for them personally. I've been blessed with a love for hacking, and I don't think what I want to be good at was ever a really big question. For many people, though, it is.

I know fellows who've graduated from engineering or computer science, yet despise code. These are the guys who are truly stuck in a quarter-life crisis: a job they don't care for, and lack of passion to succeed. For most of them their only direction is to try and make management - they don't care about the code anyways, and the financial success will numb their sadness a little bit. I don't think they will find the solution to their "quarterlife crisis" there though.

dawie• 17 years ago

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.

dickwad• 17 years ago

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

mhb• 17 years ago

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

arakyd• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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

edu• 17 years ago

I recommend you 'Manhattan Murder Mystery'

physcab• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

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

jimbokun3• 17 years ago

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

Then it would not be an impulse purchase.

arram• 17 years ago

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

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

csbartus• 17 years ago

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.

jimbokun3• 17 years ago

"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. :)

100k• 17 years ago

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.

mr_luc2• 17 years ago

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.

martythemaniak3• 17 years ago

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_luc2• 17 years ago

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.

Derrek• 17 years ago

Where in South America are you?

shaunxcode• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

Congrats

stevenbedrick• 17 years ago

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

johnnybgoode• 17 years ago

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.

Welcome to Your Quarter Life Crisis

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