Quarterlife Crisis
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Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis: Sample Chapter
Introduction: The Answers
Three years ago, a little book called Quarterlife Crisis unexpectedly hit a big nerve. The book described the feelings of apprehension and indecision that walloped twentysomethings during the transition between young adulthood and adulthood. It discussed how twentysomethings were lost and confused, largely because there was no roadmap to these years, no manual providing answers. It lamented the absence of a guide – a book with solutions for how to emerge successfully and happily from the struggles of this age.
Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis is that guide.
This new book is written for all twentysomethings and thirtysomethings, regardless of gender, finances, race, status, and geographic location. It is for – and includes advice from – those who went to college, as well as those who did not; those who work blue collar jobs, white collar jobs, or no job at all; those with money and those carrying six-figure debt loads; those with relatively few obligations and those who are single parents with tremendous responsibilities; those who are close to depression and those who feel like they almost have it together. Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis addresses our age group’s common bond: the deep, soulsearching questions that keep us awake at night; the tough, hard-hitting questions that we’re sometimes too afraid to ask even ourselves.
Many of us in our 20s and 30s go through a period that leaves us feeling panicked or directionless. For some of us, the challenges of this time become so overwhelming that we may seriously second-guess our abilities, intensely question our lives, or crush our own self-esteem with our doubts. That’s what happened to me. I wrote the first Quarterlife Crisis essentially to figure out what was so wrong with me that during what I thought were supposed to be the most carefree, freewheeling years of my life, I felt useless, sad, and ill equipped for life after school.
But something happened during the process of writing that first book that changed my life. As I interviewed twentysomething after twentysomething, in the course of compiling other people’s stories my own story changed. After months of regularly beating myself to a mental pulp because I wasn’t living up to my own standards, it was the simplest of facts that jolted me out of my funk: I was normal. When the twentysomething sources unloaded on me their fears, doubts, and uncertainties, I realized that my insecurities were common – and that I therefore wasn’t a freak after all. That was all I needed to know.
I have heard from hundreds of readers who only needed to know the same thing. But countless more twentysomethings wrote to tell me that simply knowing their problems were normal didn’t solve them. Over the past three years, scores of readers have pointed out that there was something missing from the book Quarterlife Crisis, an egregious omission that left them still searching, still questioning, still brokenhearted by the gap between the person they are and the person they want to be.
The book was missing the answers.
When I started writing that first book, I was 23 and in the midst of my own Quarterlife Crisis. I thought it would be presumptuous to offer my peers suggestions for how to fix their lives when I was so frustrated with my own. Other than sharing sources’ stories with readers to let them know they weren’t alone, I had no idea how else I could help them. But that was then.
I’m still not foolish enough to presume I have all the answers now. But thousands of other twentysomethings do – and I’ve spent the past few years grilling them for these solutions. That’s what this book is for. While the point of the first book was to introduce the problems of the Quarterlife Crisis, the aim of Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis is to solve them.
You don’t need to have read that first book to get the most out of this one. The new premise of Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis is that one of the major reasons our generation feels clueless and torn is that we don’t have any mentors. Throughout our years in school, we had specific people to turn to for help and guidance: teachers, advisers, counselors, coaches, parents. But once we graduate and grapple with real-world issues, we don’t have someone readily available to tell us, “I’ve been there. Here’s how I got through it.” And because of the ever-widening generation gap, our parents’ experiences in many areas aren’t necessarily relevant anymore.
Take the workplace. Several decades ago, for example, a young graduate might have expected to choose a company and remain there for much of his or her life, gaining guidance and insights under the tutelage of older employees. Now, however, many workers view twentysomethings as threats to their jobs; instead of mentoring young hires, they often clash with or ignore them. This sense of competition has left our craving for guidance, at the workplace and in other areas of life, unfulfilled.
One of my aims with this book is to get the concept of mentorship back into society. Imagine if we each had people whom we could contact for advice whenever we had questions about work, love, dreams, home, social life, or identity issues – people who had wrestled with the same matters during similar times and conquered them. Imagine if we each had go-to guys who would talk us through hard times or, when we needed it, would give us a figurative kick in the pants. Imagine having your own personal Oprah. Your own personal Vince Lombardi.
The structure of this book mirrors that premise by providing those missing mentors, at least temporarily. After thousands of interviews, I’ve pinpointed some of the most widespread quarterlife dilemmas and paired twentysomethings in the midst of them with people in our generation who have dealt with those same situations successfully. For every twentysomething with a problem, I have twenty- or thirtysomethings with answers. I thought it was important that the voices of wisdom in this book come not from professional experts, but from people who navigated these issues sometime over the past ten years. In fact, along with many new voices of experience, some of the original Quarterlife Crisis twentysomethings are back – older, wiser, healthier, and ready to serve as mentors. These mentors share the problems they faced, the suggestions they learned, and the advice they wish they had known. Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis is the chance for our generation to get advice from people who have been there and done that.
It’s probably too idealistic to hope that this book sparks the beginnings of a societal movement toward mentorship. It might be too cheesy to explicitly call for that. (Our generation isn’t the “let’s all hold hands and sing” type, anyway.) But how many times do we have to hear that we’re an aloof generation before we do something about it? There are many reasons that we are an age group on disconnect, as Oprah rightly assessed in her show on “The Turbulent Twenties.” But part of the responsibility to remedy that is on us. If we want to show older groups that we do care, that we want to lead a useful, helpful existence, perhaps it’s time we as a generation begin to combat that image.
It wouldn’t hurt to start by reaching out to ask for help. Although in this book I use only fellow twenty- and thirtysomethings as mentors, in life there is nothing to lose by developing mentor relationships at any age. One might ask what older mentors would get out of this relationship beyond a sense of volunteerism and companionship. Actually, “reverse mentorship” is an idea that hasn’t received much attention beyond a focus on technology training. Reverse mentors – usually twentysomethings – provide older individuals with insight into current popular culture and social trends, technological expertise, and generational thinking. Reverse mentorship programs have already caught on at some companies, including General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, and Best Buy. Just as mentorship plays a crucial role in this book, so, too should it become an integral part of our lives. If we can return the workplace and social environment to one of mentorship – or fuel a new trend toward reciprocal relationships of mutual mentorship – we may collectively be able to conquer the Quarterlife Crisis once and for all.
To further bridge the generation gap, it helps to try to understand it. We live in completely different times than even our parents’ generation. Our lifestyle, for example, is much more fast paced. Because the Internet Age affected our formative years, we have witnessed a hurtling pace of technological advance that has put a greater emphasis on quickness and convenience in our lives. From cell phones to Instant Messaging, microwaves to palm pilots, MP3s to DVDs, we have become not only accustomed to but even societally influenced to crave instant gratification. So perhaps it’s not so surprising that when we consider our possible paths in life, we become anxious if we can’t figure out ways to find and follow them quickly.
We also seem to be a much more introspective generation than older groups – if only because we are one of the first generations to have the luxury to do so. When older generations reached their 20s, they graduated from school, quickly looked for a life partner (if they hadn’t found one already), and immediately leapt into a career in order to support the family they anticipated having soon. The 20s were not a time of trial and error, as they are for us. They were a time to grow up fast.
Many older people haven’t realized that the 20s aren’t what they used to be. For us, the 20s have become more of a transition period than an endgame. The average age of marriage has shifted from 21 for women and 23 for men in 1970 to 25 for women and 27 for men. The average number of jobs a person has in his or her 20s has jumped to 8.6 jobs between the ages of 18 and 32. The phrase “30 is the new 20” has caught on.
While critics point to these figures as evidence of our generation’s immaturity, I think they indicate something far more hopeful. Because we’re not thrust into full-fledged adulthood immediately following adolescence, we are lucky enough to have the time and leisure to grapple with identity issues at a much earlier age than did members of the generations before us. This doesn’t doom us to a lifetime of crises complaints, as critics have snarled. Rather, we are resolving in our 20s the issues that our parents didn’t have time to wrestle with until middle age. This could mean that by the time our generation reaches middle age, because we will already have confronted our demons, we could escape the midlife crisis altogether. And by then, the notion that twentysomethings confront a tough phenomenon called the Quarterlife Crisis will hopefully be so widely accepted that little books introducing the concept will be beside the point.
Quarterlife Crisis FAQ
Whether this is the first you’ve heard of the Quarterlife Crisis or you’d simply like a refresher, here’s all you need to know:
Q: What is the Quarterlife Crisis?
A: Like the midlife crisis, the Quarterlife Crisis is a response to reaching a turning point in life – in this case, the transition between young adulthood and adulthood. The overwhelming identity issues of this age can cause a variety of reactions, ranging from intense self-doubt that can spiral into something as serious as a clinical depression to something as subtle as looking at your life as an alleged adult and having a nagging feeling of “Is this all there is?”
These feelings can start as early as late adolescence, when you’re nearing the end of your school years and preparing for the “real world,” whether you’re in high school or college. An upcoming graduation often triggers this kind of panic about your future; it’s a natural fear of the impending culture shock. After we leave the school environment, suddenly there’s no road map anymore. There are no promises that we can get from point A to point B, no matter how hard we work.
For other people, the Quarterlife Crisis hits in the mid-20s, when you feel that your life so far as a supposed adult isn’t bringing you the satisfaction and inner peace you had expected. And for still others, the Quarterlife Crisis hits in the late 20s or early 30s, at around the time society somehow seems to expect us to have our lives all figured out.
Q: What are some signs of the Quarterlife Crisis?
A: Twentysomethings and thirtysomethings individually experience the Quarterlife Crisis in so many ways that it would be impossible to list them all here. Nonetheless, here are six relatively common signs.
- You don’t know what you want.
One major cause of anxiety is that twentysomethings are afraid that we’re not going to find the passion in life that inspires us, whether it’s a job, a hobby, or a person. You worry that not only are you not going to be able to figure out how to get what you want, but also that you might not discover what it is you really want in the first place.
- Your 20s aren’t what you expected.
We expect that our college and post-college years will be the most carefree, responsibility-free time of our independent adult lives. But then when you are sitting alone at home, thinking that everyone else your age has it together while you’re missing your college friends, wondering how to find a date, and realizing you have no idea what you want to do with your life, you feel like your uncertainties and doubts mean that there’s something wrong with you.
- You have a fear of failure.
Another sign of a Quarterlife Crisis is a fear of failure – that if you fail at one thing, you’ll fail at another, and your self esteem will plummet.
- You can’t let go of childhood.
You feel stuck in a limbo somewhere between young adulthood and adulthood, and you don’t know how or when to let go of your childhood, or if you even want to.
- You waffle over decisions.
You’re afraid that the choices you make now will put you on a path that will affect the rest of your life, and that if you make a mistake now, you won’t be able to repair it later.
- You constantly compare.
You compare yourself to your peers and feel like you come up short. It’s like attending a high school reunion, year after year after year. You’re constantly measuring yourself, whether it’s against your friends or against the standards you set up for yourself, however unreasonable they may be.
Q: How is it different from a midlife crisis?
A: The Quarterlife Crisis and the midlife crisis are both responses to reaching an age-related transition period. But while the resulting distress and confusion might be similar, the causes of these crises are opposite. At middle age a guy might feel his life is stagnant, with too much predictability, stability, and certainty. At 25, however, a common feeling is that there’s too much unpredictability, instability and uncertainty.
I call it the Quarterlife Crisis simply because I think this phenomenon should be as widely acknowledged and accepted as the midlife crisis. The midlife crisis is a popularly accepted phenomenon that has spawned scores of resources to help middle-aged people transition and cope. I believe that people who experience the Quarterlife Crisis deserve just as many resources and reassurance that what they are going through is normal and fixable.Q: What if people say we’re whining?
A: It tends to be the people in the throes of a midlife crisis who are most vocally skeptical of the Quarterlife Crisis. These are the people who say things like, “You’re young, you’re educated, you have your whole life in front of you. What do you have to complain about?” When older people dismiss the idea of a Quarterlife Crisis as the undeserved complaints of a coddled postadolescent, they only exacerbate the problem. Depression and anxiety disorders are serious. When people our age are told that we can’t be depressed because there’s nothing seriously wrong in our lives, we are even more likely to think there’s something wrong with us for feeling this way.