Nobody likes you when you're 23.

I would rather go back to 23 right now than settle for what I've got at 25.

I recently purchased a book from the 'self-help' aisle of Barnes and Noble. This felt straight out of that Sex and the City episode where Charlotte purchases starting over, yet again. The people in the aisle looked like they had been crying for months. There were titles like "it's OK, you can do this", or "grab life by the balls damn it!".


I was originally in this section looking for a book about the phenomena of the Quarter-life crisis. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I believe i am going through a crisis.


Wikipedia says this: "A crisis is any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society. Crises are deemed to be negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or an 'emergency event'."


Also on the Quarter life crisis; "In the context of the quarter-life crisis, however, they occur shortly after a young person – usually an educated professional, in this context – enters the "real world". After entering adult life and coming to terms with its responsibilities, some individuals find themselves experiencing career stagnation or extreme insecurity. The individual often realizes the real world is tougher, more competitive and less forgiving than she/he imagined."*


Yep. Sounds about right. We spend 4 years (5 in my case) in school working our butts off to get great grades and learn all that we can about our chosen career path. We have created countless powerpoint presentations, seen times of the day that we didn't know existed, typed 30 page papers, and 10 page bibliographies, learned about subjects that we'll never use again, spent tens of thousands of dollars that we don't have! All of this for a piece of paper, that doesn't even seem to be worth much anymore.


That is a hard pill to swallow. I am going to be in debt for the next 10 years at least, and not much to show for it. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed thinking that a starting salary would be somewhere around $40k. Could I be more wrong? (in the best chandler voice I could have).


I digress.


Your 20's were what you looked forward to as a teenager. These are the ages that everyone says they would want to go back to. Adults in their 30's and 40's envy us. So why are we so unhappy, unsatisfied, and wondering what's wrong? We were supposed to get all of our angst out in our teenage years by listening to angry music. Maybe it has something to do with the break up of *NSYNC or the demise of Britney Spears? If they can't keep it together after 21, then who really can?

So my crisis manual is saying that we (20-somethings) need to accept the fact that we aren't going to automatically have the ideal anything just yet. So, how long is it going to take then? I've got things to do in the meantime! We have to pay your dues in order to get where we want and be patient. I thought those dues were tuition?

It's good to know that I'm not the only one freaking out about where my life is right now, and where it doesn't seem to be going.

Expect more on this topic, for now, I say we blame it on all the Disney Stars that went wrong. deal?