Quarter Life Crisis Poem

[zpoetryman]

I am glad to see the topic is finally getting some attention. I have not yet read your book, but I am very interested to see how the issue has evolved over the past 18 years. I'm 38 now and already in the midst of a mid life crisis. When I was 20, I wrote a poem about being half way to middle age and called it Quarter Life Crisis. If you would like I will post it here. Otherwise it can be read on my personal website @ http://home.talkcity.com/EaselSt/wz0zzz/FamilyUnTies.html with other pages on my site listed under the Favorite URL's list. No there's no charge and No I don't make any money on my website. It is basically my life in poetry for those who wish to read it. The problem of Quarter Life Crisis is one that has been ignored for way too long. Teenagers have been going through this for many years under one definition or another. Thanks for writing a book and getting it out there for people to see. I wish the internet was around 18 years ago, maybe I could have gotten the ball rolling then.
JJ

[Unregistered]

I was reading various topics for awhile here and really feeling a lot of "flashback" for all of the 20- and 30- somethings (I know a few personally I am worried about) and I don't want to discourage anybody, but the poster above with his poems made me realize that GANG IT REALLY IS NEVER OVER!!! It's life and it comes back, or should I say it just keeps hitting in waves, in various forms, over and over. But the good news is that maybe if you can realize that all the other "ages" around (now mostly older than you) aren't all that "together" or "secure" you'll just work at developing what you need to be a solid person who can face whatever comes, and that will help. Even if older folks seem "together" now, trust me, they took their knocks in getting there.

Look at it this way: you may think that your big challenge is finding a spouse or getting a degree or job - or moving from one relationship or college major or employer to another. But eventually you have to help your kids with all of this, or witness it. Eventually you are less "marketable" in spite of hard-won experience, just because employers are eyeing the next generation down for "fresh meat." Eventually you have to face health problems of your own or care for elderly parents. And that's all besides hoping that politics and mother nature don't intervene with other crunches like a housefire, hurricaine, car smashup, etc.

There are always much more hurting people who were accidentally shot while just being a customer in a convenience store during a burglary, etc. Try to always keep some perspective and trudge on. (I'm preaching as much to myself here, I need it too). Look at the clouds or toss a pebble in a pond as one of the posters at my bulletin board tells me.

Somewhere along the way you'll find a special inner self can be expressed that may never be the "main thing" society sees or employs you for, and only time will bring it out. In my mid-years I decided I'd revive playing the piano, which I had lapsed from for a LOOOOONG time, and to my amazement, somehow all the outside life experience made me able to compose, not just play. And by living long enough, "new age" music had come along, which I could relate to and found my style would fit into.

For those of you who read piano music, I'll give the link below (hope this isn't considered spam). My compositions are available for free there (not recordings, just sheet music).

Oh, and another whacko midlife thing I got involved in, is a crazy bulletin board. It's no competition for quarterlife or beliefnet, but anyone who wants to further delve into religion, philosophy or strange science is welcome there. I'm over 30 but many posters are your age and we'd love to expand the group. Take care, "From Afar" (moderator@mdcplus.com)

Music: http://www.mindspring.com/~lesmuskey/deepriver1.html
Cortex Vortex: http://pub4.ezboard.com/ffreedomofspeechthecampusministryforum

[Miserable]

I have to say worries in life is just never ending. I remember when i was still a teenager, I had so many problems/questions about life, that was back when i was 15-17 yrs old. Now that i'm turning 24, here comes another crisis- Quarter Life Crisis. LIfe sucks and I don't even know where can I can help! I feel that everyone has abandoned me and nobody really care 'bout my well-being. To them, my problems are just minor problems, all they can say is move on....no big deal. I feel as if i'm in the middle of the ocean calling for help but nobody's answering.

I've never really hoped for too much in life. I know that life could be really tough without an education so i forced myself into studying for 4 yrs at an university, now that i've been outta school for more than half a yr, i'm still unemployed. I've only done temporary, minimal wage work for agencies which i think i deserve a lot better. So i decided to go back to school for another certificate. Hell knows, the freaking term has been cancelled in the very very last minute, i even turn down a job offer. Now I'm unemployed, got nothing to do, outta money and frustrated! I didn't ask for a lot in life. Why do things always turn out terribly?! ALWAYS! It's been life that all my life. NOthing has really gone the way i wanted things go, i'm not asking for a lot here! Just these little things i wanted turn into a disaster.

Really, life sucks!

i'm gonna get that book today and hopefully it will help.

[From Afar]

Miserable, there is something I was just reading that a poster named weirdbrake said on another thread and it cannot be emphasized enough:

"Never underestimate the effect of your emotions on how you see things. Even the people who are the biggest winners in life can feel like complete losers if their emotions and self-image are distorted, and ... you're not thinking clearly now and need to regain your mental composure. You can't possibly have an accurate perspective about your future life or job prospects in the mental state you're in, and everything no doubt looks much more hopeless and hideous ... than it really is."

I haven't read the quarterlife crisis book but I read about the whole phenomenon in a feature article and I just know a lot of older folks are going to react with less than the warmest understanding. Your grandparents age group will compare it all to the war and baby "boomers" will compare this life startup crisis to vietnam and everybody older will recall all the recessions that they've weathered. But for some reason my memory of some of my bad times - '74, '83,'91- and how someone in my family always got laid off etc. give me plenty of sympathy.

At one point I had just gotten a second degree, found a job, had to live in a rooming house alone and walk all around the city to find a house for us while my husband kept working in the other state (for peanuts, as a "student husband" job always is)....while my mother kept our small child in another state. (We only had one car and the husband had to keep it with him). But at least I felt like my education had paid off and I looked forward to getting us resettled. Finally I found a place to rent, and he quit his job and moved our small bit of stuff in a u-haul it down to join me, and my child returned and started first grade. THEN my employer had a sudden layoff and guess who got the axe...all the newest people, the most vulnerable, the ones with the least savings and local connections, including me. We were devastated. I had to pull out boxes with old ads I had used only 3 months before when job searching to start all over, right in the middle of a recession when nobody was hiring. Naturally it caused a lot of marriage strain as well.

In a few weeks we found something for me and we had to pull the child out of school, move again, find my husband a job too, and start over. I had a kind of nervous breakdown, just kept it private so the employer couldn't tell but I needed months to trust anything again, and get over the stress. The new job couldn't even pay steady and I had to change again in a year...but in the long look back, the second city worked out. We eventually got a house, the child found friends, etc. Maybe if the first employer had laid me off a bit earlier, my husband would have insisted on me returning to the college town or something. It was a disastrous start, but it got us into a new environment where we could ultimately be happier and find more opportunity on the other side of the "crisis." (I was about 27 for that one).

I'm trying to say, that in the darkest part of that time, I couldn't see any light. And another bad spell happened years later with a layoff during a recession in MIDLIFE, that I thought could mean the end of my career....it took a couple of years to dig out of the debt working as many as 3 part time jobs while suffering from a ruptured disk. In time, I got a great job that I am still in, one that I only saw in the papers by hanging in there. When it was over, I had a huge box of resumes and rejection letters I finally tossed.

When things have been turbulent at this job, somehow I think I have endured BECAUSE of the sense of perspective all those rotton times gave me. A lot of people have had little ego fits and leaped out of here, not really staying the course. That may be what the bad times give you. For example, we had a monster boss for awhile who drove a lot of people away. I noticed what happened to most of them, and they were just side-ways moves, not great leaps "up." And in the end, the boss was removed and his replacement is fantastic, and I've also survived long enough to get the benefit of technological changes that have made the job improve from when I first started.

Bottom line: DON'T TRUST your feelings (as normal as they are) with objective truth, especially about the future.