Quarter Life Crisis (2005)
I’m about to turn 25. Yay me. A time to drink a lot of punch, swan around at my own party and try desperately not to repeat the murky anti-climax of last year’s ‘hosting my own party syndrome’ where I spent the entire evening in some damp, drunken, hyper-aware state of worrying about everyone having a good time and worrying about worrying and then not having a good time and no longer able to read whether anyone else was.
If only over-sensitivity was an Olympic event.
Five and twenty – It’s a milestone. A quarter of a century. I’m, statistically speaking, a third of the way through my life. I’m 5 years off 30. 15 years off 40, and 35 years off being able to turn into the mumbling, vague, cardigan wearing, daggy joke making grandpa that I’ve been my whole life.
Twenty-five is a time to look back on all the youth arts grants I never applied for, and for which I will now forever be ineligible. A realisation that in many artistic and cultural sub-catagories, I am no longer deemed a ‘youth.’ Take off the training wheels, it’s time to pancake this puppy over the dirt hump of society, and come crashing down with the gracefulness of a disco foal on ice.
There’s some saying ‘life isn’t a rehearsal.’ What a stupid saying. Of course it is! It’s a rehearsal where everyone keeps forgetting their lines, no-one knows when the director’s turning up or when opening night is. And we keep asking ‘what’s my motivation for this scene?’
My impending birthday is also a time to gauge my level of personal success on the ‘beck-o-meter.’ This is something I’ve been doing since I hit my twenties – go through the biography of my idol, folk-country-rap shananagin, Beck, and see what he had achieved by my age. Right now he was working on Odelay.
Shit.
We all need milestones! Checkpoints by which to monitor this ethereal bowl of moment muesli. Why haven’t I learnt that language yet, that instrument, that degree, that girl’s name? Why haven’t I been overseas, skydiving, paradise (for I have definitely been to ‘me’ – how’s the serenity? hahaha)
I once cracked myself up with the thought that if I met up with myself ten years ago I would probably ask to borrow money. I’m not sure what else I’d say. Probably just ‘you’re better looking than you think…’ and ‘you’ll be right’ and a list of girls not to go out with, knowing full well that I would anyway. And that’s the beauty of accepting who you are, who you were, who you always will be.
‘I’m growing into the person I always was.’
i feel as they my optimism disappears at times but its always still deep down there somewhere. sometimes it flourishes then i fall in a heap
Keep on chooglin’ Lisa.
it’s encouraging to know i’m not alone, we’re all not alone. life in these times are challenging and new. I don’t think previous generations quite understand. i guess all the options, lack of consolidation in most facets of life could be looked at like eye’s of a child.. excited in anticipation of the uncertainty. i hope it ends up for the best.
Good on you spanky 🙂 This made me very happy in my own quarter life crisis. As always thank you for your wisdom.
I should point out to the audience that Spanky was my Canberra nickname. Yes, yes, ups and downs huh? Ya gotta pull it all apart to put it back together again. The songwriting metaphors roll in – we don’t know where we’re going, only god knows where we’ve been. As my mate said the other day, “you’ve just got to grab life by the horns and $$%^ it in the face.” He’s a yoga instructor.