I had my first official “quarterlife crisis” last week. In the middle Board meeting, I excused myself, stepped outside, and booked a ticket home to Austin. I flew home approximately 12 hours later and just fell into my mom and dad’s arms as they anxiously awaited my arrival. I could tell they were nervous when I called them in tears and simply said, “I booked a ticket and I’ll be home tomorrow night. Can y’all pick me up from the airport?” You know you have good parents when they hear the distress in your voice and, rather than ask a million questions, they simply replay, “Of course. So happy you’re coming home.”

Now I don’t know what it is for you, your friends, a vacant shack in the middle of nowhere, or the privacy of your bedroom you run to but, for me, it’s the welcoming arms of a huge Texas family and home cooking. Maybe it’s just that I’m exhausted, maybe it’s because I’m just homesick or questioning my priorities, my passion and my purpose. But all I know is, like a little kid, I went running home because whatever it was, I felt like I was buckling under the pressure of adulthood’s responsibilities and expectations.

However, despite my much needed R&R, I came home to the most chaotic, depressing, unexpected  storm possible. It’s like I was trying to avoid a hurricane and fled to an island halfway across the world, only to get hit by a tsunami. The morning I arrived, I found out a dear friend had just passed away. Two hours later I was updated that one of our closest family friends was literally “missing” and that my ex-boyfriend had officially moved on (and in) with his girlfriend. Regardless, the ol’ saying, “When it rains it pours” could not be more appropriate for the past week of my life.

That’s when it occurred to me, in my pity party of one, that while we can plan and perfectly orchestrate our lives, at the end of the day, there are times when we simply have to grab out floaties and hold on for dear life. Since I pride myself on “being the author of my own life” and “dictating life on my terms,” it’s always humbling to find yourself up *%$# creek without a paddle.

For the first time in my life, I had nothing: no answers, no brilliant responses or eloquent explanations. I didn’t know up from down, left from right, nor here nor there. I sat on my couch and cried. I cried for a friend I’ll never see again; I cried for fear of my life’s ambiguity; I cried for finally closing a chapter in my life’s longest love affair; I cried for realizing I can’t control every aspect of my life nor have everything figured our by 26 and then bawled even harder at the thought of just how much I was loved by the Looney Toons I call family.

Then, as soon as it came, it was gone. I sat in silence on my couch and, when the last tear drop had rolled down my face, I realized I had just weathered a huge life storm and I was going to live. That doesn’t mean things were fixed, hearts weren’t still bruised and my problems had miraculously evaporated; it meant, in spite of them, I knew I would be okay.

And sometimes being okay is just enough to keep you going. I was once told, “Don’t waste a good crisis.” It sounded ridiculous at the time but it occurred to me that it’s in the thick of life’s greatest storms that we really learn how to sail our ships and sometimes we have to be fully broken in order to rebuild even stronger. So if you’re headed for one, in the midst of one, or have just survived a good life crisis, welcome to the gang.

My advice for the future: do what you have to do. Run home, hide under the covers, crawl in a hole when the world seems too big and too scary. But after you cry, scream, throw a fit and get everything out, you better get back out there. As I’ve said before, this life is not about avoiding obstacles, heartaches or unpleasant circumstances; it’s about facing them head on, getting beat up and knocked down but always, no matter what, getting back up.

I fly back to LA tomorrow and while my storm has subsided for now, I gladly welcome the next one that tries to throw me off my course because this girl is ten times stronger than the chick she was a week ago and it’s going to take one hell of a storm to slow me down this time.

anxiety, crisis, cry, family, life, quarterlife crisis Hide

“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” — Max Ehrmann

I suffer from a commitment phobia.  Not the I-can’t-settle-with-one-guy kind. It’s more of a I-can’t-settle-with-myself sort of a thing.  After graduating last June, I’ve been inundated with questions pressuring me to solidify my future.  Innocuous as they may seem, questions like “What are you going to do with your life?” and “Where do see yourself in ten years?” have become the bane of my existence.  My response has always been an ambiguous circumlocution followed by a swift subject change.  It’s taken a while to come to this point, but I’m finally okay with the simple and truthful answer, “I don’t know.”

As the progeny of hard-working baby boomers, our generation has benefited economically, technologically, and culturally.  Yet despite our higher education (most of us are either in college or have just graduated), we have been sorely misinformed.  As my 22 years have shown me, we believe that we need the perfect job now, the perfect apartment now, the perfect life now.  We are the Now-Now-Now generation, equipped with a sense of entitlement that has turned around to bite us in the asses.

Don’t get me wrong – I know how fortunate I am to have supportive parents, to have been raised in a comfortable home, to have a top-notch education.  But in my post-collegiate state, where an eternity of possibilities lie before me, my need to have everything right now has crippled me, making me feel as if there’s something wrong with the fact that there’s no clear-cut future in line.

I spent the summer after graduation at my parents’ house, scouring job sites with the aplomb of an egomaniac.  For better or for worse, an English degree doesn’t prepare you for a direct career path, so I was applying for positions in every industry.  I naively gave myself three months to find a job; then I would move out to start my adult life.  I thought that my prestigious education and stellar extracurriculars would make me a shoe-in for entry-level work.  Unfortunately, when three months passed, I was still jobless.  And apartmentless.  But I was determined to move out anyway.

Homeless and unemployed, I spent the last month-and-a-half couch-surfing and continuing my job hunt.  It wasn’t exactly how I pictured life after college, but I’ve come to terms with my situation.  While I could have done without the aching back (sleeping on couches will do that to you), I’m grateful for what I’ve gained.

I’m closer to the friends that I crashed with thanks to their generosity.  I’m amazed at my family’s capacity for support during my transitional time. Most importantly, I’m more self-aware and self-forgiving.  As an English major, I’ve had to read a lot of books, and when dealing with time constraints, there was admittedly some skimming involved. Now, with a little more time on my hands, there’s no need to skip to the end. The best part of a novel is the development of the characters, finding out how they got to that final objective.  The same applies to me.  As cliché as it sounds, life is about the journey, not the destination.  So pack lightly, wear comfortable shoes, and keep a good record of what happens because I’d like to hear your story if we ever meet along the way.

couch-surfing, gen y, graduate, job search, quarterlife crisis Hide