So I think the quarter-life crisis has hit me. It feels almost exactly like what I read about it online: unhappiness and uncertainty with yourself after entering the “adult world”. Is working all I’ll be doing for decades? Am I saving enough money? Am I happy with my career? What about love life? How am I doing compared to my friends? I feel like I’m missing out on something, what is it? I’m turning 30 soon, how much was I able to do before that deadline?
The logical side of me thinks that asking these questions is somewhat pointless, but still they nag at the brain. Every “crisis” I encountered before had a binary yes-or-no answer: Can I make it into a good university? Will I be able to graduate? Can I find a job? But now that I’ve passed these steps, the world became much more open-ended. Relationship? Optional. Retirement? Good luck, assuming you don’t die early. Making friends? Seems like even keeping old ones is hard enough. It also doesn’t help learning that the world seems to be consistently getting worse.
Which is why the quarter-life crisis feels like it has come out swinging in full force. I have no clue what I’m doing or going, and what I’m doing doesn’t feel too satisfying, which wasn’t something teenage me didn’t expect. Younger me just didn’t know these feelings and states-of-mind existed. My friends seem to be moving with their lives, while here I am making blog posts and dumb memes on a website no one visits. Not that I dislike blogging or do it unhealthily, but sometimes I wonder if I can use my time better.
Of course, the quarter-life crisis isn’t just a series of unfortunate events. I’ve made some positive changes and did a lot of travelling within the monotony of life. If I quantified all the “value” I got from doing/experiencing things, I definitely progressed a little. Maybe the dissatisfaction comes from seeing the progress gauge not increase as fast as it used to, or just the shock of entering a completely different phase of life. All I know is that improving this gauge is what keeps the crisis at bay for me. I don’t know how I would feel if I was truly stagnating.
I just hope that in the future, I can look back at my mid-twenties without much regret. That’s the one thing I really want to avoid.