OK, so now what?

I've noticed over the past few months that I'm angry. Angrier than I've been in a very long time. And not the kind of anger that is useful in say changing the world or something epic like that. I'm angry that I don't seem to know where to go next. My entire life was planned up until I got my first "real" job. And since I did that (three long years ago), I've been treading water. The plan was: graduate high school (check), pick a college and career (check), get internship experience (check), graduate college (check), get a job (check), get an apartment (check)... then what? I feel the overwhelming pressure of upward mobility. Keep achieving, keep working, keep rising above your station. But somewhere along the way, I've either lost my momentum or ambition and now I'm just stuck and confused. Do I want to stay in this field? I don't know. Do I want to get a master's? Yes, but in what? And at what cost? Am I content to just bury my head in the sand and stay where I am? No, but how, how, how do I get out? This is my quarter-life crisis.

This article from ABC News (though it's a little dated) offers a picture of the very real time in modern 20-somethings lives. According to the article, there are significant declines in "adulthood benchmarks," as compared to our parents. For example the article offers these statistics:

"In 2000, 46 percent of women and 31 percent of men had reached those markers by age 30. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had reached those same markers by age 30. Among 25-year-old women, 70 percent in 1960 had attained traditional adult status, as defined by reaching those benchmarks, whereas in 2000 only 25 percent had done so."

The article also mentions that ours is the first generation that will not do better than their parents, due to the fact that bachelor's degrees are so common and professional degrees are becoming increasingly expected in order to climb the career ladder. But yet at the same time, we are expected to continually achieve. The bar was set high for us by our parents. So, we're left to try and figure it out with the scourges of debt, uncertainty and instability to deal with.

There has some backlash against the idea of a quarter-life crisis. A piece from The Faster Times offers an opposition to a recent article by The Washington Post. Author for The Faster Times, Clay Risen writes:

"Only in a country as developed as America could we even consider pathologizing success: Kids who leave college and land good jobs that, guess what, aren’t able to fulfill their every whim. Only in a country that coddles its children into believing not only that each of them can be president, but will be president, could the stability of a good life be called a let down. I’m sure there are more than a few kids out their whining about their soul-sucking $50,000-a-year job. There are also a lot who are just having a hell of a good time being young — and a lot, especially outside the United States, who can only dream of one day making 50k. If the quarter-life crisis is real at all, it’s the psychological equivalent of obesity, a problem brought on by our own wealth."

I don't completely disagree with Risen. It absolutely is a problem brought on by generational, social and economic expectations. We've been taught from the time we could understand the idea that we were special. Each and everyone of us can and will grow up to be whatever our hearts desire. This is not reality, but because we've been inundated with this idea, the act of failing to achieve it is even more damaging.

Interesting little fact: I just went back to look at my previous drafts of posts that I abandoned, and almost exactly one year ago today, I started a post on the quarter-life crisis. Obviously, I'm still in the midst of it with no clear direction on how to get out.