Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Quarter-Life Crisis

I think lots of people go through a quarter life crisis, though some try to hold it off until the "big" midlife crisis. I can feel it seeping farther and farther in my skin. It started when I was getting ready to graduate college. I hadn't achieved as much as other people thought I should to prove that I was worth moving forward directly to graduate school, and besides that I was too lazy and lost to know what I wanted to do anyway.

So what do I do? Go work at a job I already had, hoping for advancement. Then fly to a new country to be married and live in uncertainty for two years. I also found something I liked to do there; it was easy and I honestly didn't have to think much about it. Besides, I had a husband to take care of me. But you can't stay there forever. You have to move again.

Now I have bigger dreams. I'm ready to take life by the horns, get involved more and create a life I can be proud of. I'm only 25, how hard can it be? So the reality that no one tells you is that you have to work hard. Harder than you ever thought possible to do something worth doing. Some people are good with words, some people are good with sales. Some people are good at a variety of things. So if you're good at a variety of things, or if you have no clue what you can be good at, you have to try on a lot of different hats to figure out what will stick. High school didn't prepare me for what the real world is REALLY like. Trial and error, unless you have the ability, the resolve and the opportunity to make it happen the way you have always dreamed. Sometimes those dreams go through a detour in the mean time. Some dreams are altruistic in nature but require a lot of real world business know how to achieve. Then you have to ask yourself at the end of the day if you are getting a pay that you can live with and that you feel you deserve for the work you are doing.

I have always said that money never mattered much to me. But what if I could make a really good living while doing what I love most? (That would be helping people, which I had a small view of until just recently). Is it even possible? I think that like a lot of people my age who are wandering through life, through jobs, right now I have the opportunity to change my life drastically. No one knows if the changes we make to our lives will be worth it. No one knows if we start on a path if it will be fruitful. It takes more than thoughts, it takes dedication, commitment, and a hell of a lot of hard work.

I recently spoke to a girlfriend who is in almost the same boat. She has more education than I but she is considering three opportunities that are very different from each other. How does she decide which route to take? Does she look at her passions? Does she look at money? Does she look at which would giver her the most security? But the real issue is that she must make this decision as soon as possible. We all know that the sooner you make a decision the more information you can gather and the easier the transition will be.

Now what happens when opportunity rises up so swiftly that you have little time to dilly-dally and you must act as soon as possible? I have the same feeling every time I'm on a roller coaster, and I've never had a bad time on a roller coaster. 

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