La Crisis De Los 25

welcome to your quarterlife crisis

you can´t make any decisions because you don´t know who you are. and you don´t know who you are because you´re allowed to be anyone you want.

how messed up is that?

imagine a day in the life of a couple you probably know. he´s 27 years old, and she´s 26. they wake up beside each other in his downtown bachelor apartment and have sex that neither of them particularly enjoys. they´ve been sort-of dating for a while now, but they´re not willing to commit to each other: he likes her, but doesn´t know if he always will. she can´t decide if she likes him more or less than the other two guys she´s sleeping with.

he bikes to work at an advertising agency, where he uses his masters in english to proofread ad copy, and spends several hours reading music blogs and watching movie trailers, periodically twittering updates about his workday to his 74 followers. he doesn´t really hate his job, but feels as if his skin is crawling with vermin most of the time that he´s there, so he has a plan to move to Thailand, or to maybe write a book. or go to law school.

at her government job, she instant messages her friends and mostly ignores the report she´s drafting because sheps planning on quitting anyway -and has been plannning to quit for about a year now. she spends her lunch hour buying boots that cost slightly more than her rent, then immediately regrets it.

he listlessly works through lunch, then goes to the bar after work to meet up with some university friends, where they talk about their jobs and make ironic jokes about other people. back at home, he wonders why he feels so gross and empty after spending time with them, but it´s mostly better than being alone.

she walks to the house that she shares with three friends and spend a few more hours on celebrity gossip websites, then clicking through the facebook photos of girls she knew in high school posing with their husbands and babies, simultaneously judging them, and feeling a deep pit of jealousy, and a strange kind of loss. "when did this happen for them?" she wonders.

they both eventually fall asleep, late and alone, each of them wondering what it is that´s wrong with them that they can´t quite seem to understand.

this phenomenon, known as the "quarterlife crisis", is as ubiquitous as it is intangible. unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedomand free-for-all individuation. they can´t make any decisions, because they don´t know what they want, and they don´t know whtar they want because they don´t know who they are, and they don´t know who they are because they´re allowed to be anyone they want.

when

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