You are only cool if you have a quarter-life crisis
Have you ever heard someone say: “I’ve had such a quiet week!”? Or: “I’m not that busy today and I’m not tired either.”? Probably not.
Say hi to the quarterlife crisis. We are all getting busier and busier in our late twenties, early thirties and we think that’s cool. Interesting. The more you have to do, the cooler your life sounds. Four jobs at once, eighteen best friends demanding attention, fourteen coffees here and there on the weekend and even squeezing in some family obligations on Sunday night. We do it with ease and we enjoy it. But it also drains you, that constant pressure to perform – and that’s why many young people struggle with burnout. And it’s not just about being trendy busy and wanting to juggle seventeen balls at once.
The choice is yours
As a young adult, you’re thinking more than ever about what you really want to do with your life. Nice to have that diploma in hand, but is this the This is how you recover from a bore-out: one you always dreamed of? Is this the man life you always envisioned? Do you want kids already or still enjoy nights of sleeping through for eight hours? Doubts, worrying, making decisions. And that, combined with being busy day in and day out, quickly leads to a real thirties dilemma. A quarterlife crisis. Or: a midlife crisis, but you’re just a bit younger and don’t have the money to buy that expensive sports car.
The strange thing about this ‘crisis’ is: it’s just part of it nowadays when you’re around thirty. Do you know exactly what you want and have zero worries or doubts? Then there’s something wrong with you, you know. You’re not ambitious, not serious. Because a bit of a modern girl at 29 doubts and worries and weighs her options all day long.
Why are we only now learning about the whole term quarterlife crisis? Our parents didn’t have to deal with that and the whole word didn’t even exist. It now has everything to do with uncertainty, feeling restless, and having too much freedom. Because you just keep going, everything flows along, but you don’t really stop to think about anything. You don’t feel like yourself because you don’t really know who you are now that you’re truly an adult and leading an adult life. The weeks fly by and those life choices keep haunting you. And there are so many choices – more than ever. In the past, you became a baker and were happy with that. In the past, you studied medicine and became a general practitioner and were happy with that. Now you study communication and can become a dolphin trainer in Bali or a marketing director in a hotel chain. Anything is possible.
And as exhausting as it can be to deal with this quarterlife crisis, you are definitely a girl of this time. So is it bad if you have this thirties dilemma? No. Maybe a small consolation. But it
does give you something else to doubt about.
FACTS
- More than a million people in the Netherlands with a job are dealing with burnout.
- Three-quarters of highly educated people between 25 and 35 are facing dilemmas surrounding the quarterlife crisis.
- Almost half of all psychologists in our country have a waiting list and cannot help clients with concerns immediately.
