:: book bound

Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis ... Thanks, I think.

I get a weekly email alert from EyeWeekly - a free indie paper in Toronto - and normally, I skim through the message in a couple of seconds, not really finding anything that grips my fancy enough to want to read on. This week, as soon as I saw quarterlife crisis, I was sold, and in it for the long haul.

I've always been fascinated by the concept of a quarterlife crisis. Since it's still a relatively new life "crisis" recognized as fact, it somehow always helps me to feel a little better whenever an article about it creeps up. Well, helps me feel better or worse, depending on the day. I think in this case, it only made me feel worse.

I read through the article, agreeing with every word - the confusion, the lack of direction, the fact that having too many options is the reason for not choosing an option in the first place. I can't fathom the number of times I've ranted to someone about the fact that we have too many options now-a-days; we don't know what to do because we can do anything.

Quarterlife crises generally begin hitting people in their mid-twenties, shortly following graduating when you've spent a few years in the work force and begin to wonder, "Is this it? What's next?"

Unfortunately for me, I graduated at the ripe, young age of 21 and began to feel the pangs of Seriously? a couple of years ago. Unfortunate, again, is the fact that now I am only 24 and everyone around me is getting married, buying houses, and considering children - generally things saved for the latter half of someone's twenties. By default, I've been thrown into a full blown quarterlife crisis because everyone around me - and I suppose myself, included, to a degree - have chosen to accelerate our lives. The only difference is, whereas I only chose the shorter schooling route, everyone else chose to accelerate the rest as well. I am the only 24 year old I know who still wants to have fun, experience life, travel and not shackle myself down to a mortgage, children and one job for the rest of my days. The disconnect between myself and my friends seems to grow more and more every day; they don't really know it, for they don' feel it in their happy, little lives, but I feel it for I have none of these things, except ambition and drive.

It's an interesting thing, my generation. I don't understand when the rush factor became so prominent as to take over our lives. Here we are, following a generation of individuals that chose to delay marriages and mortgages in favour of jump starting careers and delaying hard work in favour of travelling and experiencing the world. We've seemingly done the opposite.

I don't fit in with the way everyone around me has chosen to move through the motions, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't make things, at times, more challenging than they need to be. Disconnect.

Funny how that's the way I typically feel, day to day, when recently, at work, we've launched a new brand wholly based on connection. It's hard to market something when you're not feeling it.