Growing Pains, Aged 24

“A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.”

Guest Writer: Lizzy J

My quarter life crisis started a few months after my 24th birthday— this was inconveniently early, seeing as I still had months to go before I was officially 25. I had just started a new job at a prestigious healthcare organization.

It was my first corporate job and the second job in my career. By my own account and the accounts of others seeing my life from the outside, I had cracked it. I was working a fancy full-time job in a position for what I went to college for.

My parents were happy, my professors proud, my LinkedIn network congratulatory, my friends impressed. I should have been content, but instead I went into a little spiral after starting the new job.

No one and no-thing prepares you for the transition of being a working adult. You work for your entire life up to that point to get to that point. Your parents try to put you in the ‘right’ schools so you can get the ‘right’ education that will prepare you for the ‘right’ future. High school and college is you working toward this goal of getting the right job. Then you get your first job. Then you have a steady income. And steady bills, errands, chores, appointments, decisions, emergencies that slowly drain your savings.

I’d done what I’d been told to do and gotten what I’d spent years setting myself up for. An adult job, an adult life. An exhausting grind, the same boring routines. The questions pounding in my head as I sat at my new desk at my fancy new job, aged 24, were:

• Is this it?

• THIS is what my life is going to look like for the next 40 years?! and,

• Why is it all actually such a disappointment?

I immediately wanted to start a new life and try a new formula for a more exciting life. Late night Google searches included, ‘how to move to a goat farm in Italy.’ ‘Best coastal towns to live in Maine.’ ‘Rules for Americans moving to Europe.’ I wanted a plan B. I wanted a glamorous, adventurous, fun, exotic, imposter syndrome-free life.

I didn’t want to be a corporate robot, a cog in a machine, someone who swiped in for work every day and whose sense of adventure was controlled by how many hours were saved in my PTO bank.

Something to learn about life is it is a grand adventure. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do grand things to make it an adventure. The adventure is in how quickly it all changes.

It never stays the same, even if you never move, never switch jobs, have the same friends, try to stay the same person, feel stuck in your current life. Life doesn’t slow down. The adventure will always find you, even if you don’t move halfway across the world to chase it.

I’m still at the fancy job. I’m 25, and while this particular life crisis has settled down, I’m anticipating many more crises in the future. The dramatic urges to move and start a new life don’t hit me as often as they did last year, but I still wonder about alternative lives I could be living (possibly in Europe, a bigger city, or a different job) that would make my life better.

The thing about all these alternative lives is any combination will not equal perfection. No life is without hard days, struggles, things to not like about life.

Real life kind of is a disappointment even as it’s an adventure. But we figure it out bit by bit. Life will all change before my next life crisis kicks in, and there’s so much to learn in the details that make my life exactly the way it is right now. It might feel boring most of the time, but it’s also all very exciting– I’ll never be here, at this exact age and in this exact place experiencing exactly all these things, again.

Even with mundane, predictable, and sometimes disappointing schedules, routines, seasons, and days, there is always something new. Part of the adventure is being open to the changes while enjoying what you have right this second. And even if I’m experiencing all this life in the Midwest instead of the south of France, that’s okay with me. It’s all still an adventure because it’s my messy, boring, crazy, unique, loud, unpredictable life.

“A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi