That’s called a quarter-life crisis and it doesn’t save you from having a mid life crisis in most cases
Hey, don’t be such a pessimist. With declining life expectancies and impending climate catastrophe it may be a real mid life crisis after all.
Fuuuuuuck
yeah it’s wise to adjust to the idea of a 50 year life expectancy
its important to have an existential crisis in your 20s, because it makes you more sensitive and adaptive to the pressures. then, you can take steps to transition through the next one.
“nothing is turning out how i expected it would when taking this path, and it sucks so bad i need to make some changes, including taking on some big risks.”
the people who have their first one in their late 30s/40s are the people who ignored the signs of their own discontent and stuffed down their anxieties, replacing them with external assurances and now have arrived at a stage in life where a big change is going to involve a fundamental restructuring of their own identity and their relation to life’s typical milestones.
it is much more adaptive to start interrogating your life and making changes in your late 20s, in my opinion, even if that means forcing the crisis. i lost my shit at 27 and for the next several years of reorienting myself to chase something new, i felt like all my old cohort were leaving me in the dust. they all had mortgages and marriages and kids and ewuity and careers with incomes. i was pretty much fucked and scrambling day to day to try to become something else entirely.
but 10 years later, they were mostly divorced in jobs they hated wanting to try something else but not thinking they could, and geographically tethered to exes by co-parenting arrangements.
all that to say, without serious guardrails capitalism doesn’t allow stable careers and stable family arrangements for the working class, so not-rich people who think they’re gonna have one or even both are ice skating up hill.
once you can recognize you live inside the crisis engine as a product of its incomplete combustion, you might find a different way to live.
This is a great comment. I had my existential crisis at 23-25 and my god at 32 I am actually happy. There’s a lot of shit going around but I am happy with my identity, my understanding of the world, economics, politics, and people, and I feel like an individual. I have my hobbies and interests and humor and confidence. It sucked for those few years but it was an important growth period in my life in identifying what truly made me happy and sticking with it
I think the most important thing I finally understood was how to completely stop caring about things if they don’t bring me happiness. Funny enough one of the best lessons I had was through a video game that just didn’t respect my time and I realized I don’t need to play for efficiency anymore, I can just play for fun, and if I’m not having fun, I will play something else. That extrapolated into understanding what and who matters and what and who doesn’t, and being able to prioritize my habits and my attitude towards the external world. It helps me identify and cut through the fluff and recognize the parts of things that are good and bad, and even if much of society and the economy want to hide things behind the bad (using my time or money disproportionately), I can recognize it now.
Also understanding that I am a data point, and while I am just one data point, acting in a way that would communicate to the companies that I do business with that I enjoy or don’t enjoy something and not allowing them to dictate how I should live my life. I feel like I’ve reclaimed a version of child-stubbornness or innocence where I can see something for what it is, and push past it or stick with it, with a bluntness that only really children have. A disregard for norms
Same comrade, agreed on all points. Glad I realised I was not enjoying life and felt alienated from everything around me in my early 20s so I could make the decision to change everything before I had any major commitments.
Did have to leave a simple office job to spend a few years going through hell but came out of it in a better place.
To be honest, you can absolutely have both. My quarter-life crisis was about the role of higher education in my life, and my midlife crisis was about all the things my quarter-life crisis didn’t deal with. And I don’t think you can guarantee that your quarter-life crisis will deal with everything. The next 20 years are perfectly adequate to paint yourself into another, worse, corner.
Tried it, it just comes back in your late 30s anyway.
The rate the US is going 20 is gonna be midlife before you know it
Have it while your 5
Daily, pre-nap freakout.
Just have a crisis every 5 years to cover your bases
Looks like others have already said this but as someone who had a life crisis at 20, I’m currently very close to starting my version of a mid-life crisis rock band
it’s gonna be a grindcore band fyi
just need some people who need vocals by someone who can’t play an instrument
A friend of mine at the age of 35 got super into jazz and picked up the double bass despite having no musical inclination before that. He seems to be having a lot of fun.
There’s still time…
zoomers have bussin life crises
I had one when I was 14, then another one at 25 and then another one back when I was 36
Still kickin’
Mid decade crisis
give us an update at 47
Will do, gonna be a little bit of a wait though
That’s perfect since I wasn’t planning on living past 40 anyway.
Midday crisis
I did, got that over with, but then someone else’s midlife crisis fucked up my life anyway :(
Way ahead of you. Rebuilding my life halfway across the world as we speak.
Considering the state of the world I think most people are in full-life crisis now.
