For the last two years or so, I’ve been experiencing a sort of nagging pain that has grown more and more as I’ve gotten older. I hit 25 about a month ago, and the feeling escalated and the only phrase I’ve found to deal with the bizarre feeling is that I’m going through a bit of a quarter life crisis. I’ve even found that a lot of my older friends have been experiencing a similar crisis for a few years, something I could never relate to, and now am feeling kind of foolish for not understanding what they meant.

Image courtesy of the something awful forums

I’ve read up a little more on the quarter life crisis, first of all just to find out if it even exists. It turns out it does, and I was quite worried to find that a great deal of people had decided that it was nonsense, not real and everyone claiming to experience such things should “get over it and enjoy their youth”. Oh dear. My guess is, most of those commenter’s are over a certain age and idealise the 20s age bracket. Your 20s are supposed to be full of fun and frolicking without any responsibility, right? Who has a life crisis at that age?

But it’s real, and I know because I’m experiencing it right now. It turns out, when you’re 25 you actually have a lot of decisions to make. When should I start a family? What do I want to do for a career for the rest of my life? I’ve never been one to think “I need money to be happy!” but it certainly takes money to support a family, and to do the things in life that are fulfilling while still having a house and family. I’d kind of like to be living a pretty good life when I hit my 40s, and it feels like I have to make all these decisions right now. Hense the quarter life crisis. It’s weird because my usual outlook on life is “no regrets, everything I did that was stupid had a good reason behind it at the time” but now I’m looking back thinking “I really should’ve planned more,” “Why didn’t I take that job offer?” and other stupid questions.

So, in order to combat this random age-fuelled panic (I filled out a form today and for the first time realised I was now in the 25-34 age bracket – a discovery I did not appreciate) I’m reminding myself of everything I discovered growing up before I hit 23. That regrets are pointless, I can change things around right now if I wanted to, that I’m in control of the rest of my life and a whole bunch of stuff I’m not going to go into or else this blog will go on forever…

Have you experienced the quarter life crisis? Do you even believe it exists? Let me know in the comments