I’m trying something that gets me out of my comfort zone for 100 days and documenting the process. Today, I’m having a nervous breakdown.
I have never been a calm, collected or composed person.
Everyone who knows me can attest that I am often dramatic. That I like expressing myself. That I live passionately. My family says it’s because of my ancestry — I have genes from some of the feistiest ethnic groups in the world, both on my mum’s and my dad’s side.
In spite of how dramatic my behavior is, or how expansive my gestures are, I have quite a balanced interior life. I cry because of fictional things, like the fact that (spoiler alert) Dumbledore dies, but I rarely cry because I’m sad-sad. I am usually optimistic, positive and have a blessed ability of quickly getting over unpleasant stuff. I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression in my teens (like most teenagers, I guess), but things got much calmer when I got into my roaring 20s.
So why am I feeling like I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown?
I’ve been feeling kind of off lately. It’s not that things are going bad, because they aren’t. My personal life is fine. My job’s all right. My side projects are going okay. And I don’t know why I’m like this.
(welp, is this article hard to write or what.)
In true 100 Days of Discomfort fashion, I’ve decided to see what exactly makes me uncomfortable and how I’m tackling the problem.
I got down to write everything that was bothering me and I ended up with 5 pages of stream-of-consciousness. Concerning as hell. I know I am a critical person, but five pages of uninterrupted complaints about the universe in general and my life in particular were a bit too much, even for me. Fortunately, most of the things circled back to three main issues:
- I worry about not creating enough value in the world. At my workplace, I constantly feel like I’m not a valuable addition to the team and that I’m actually hindering them, instead of helping them. When it comes to my side projects, I worry about not giving them enough attention. I’m always questioning myself — am I doing enough? Am I doing things with meaning? Am I helping? (…And so on.)
- I worry about my career path. I don’t particularly like what I’m doing with my career. I switched jobs in June because I wanted to transition towards a more technical field, but I don’t think my current job is a fit for me. It’s easy to identify things I don’t like, but what do I really like? How do I want my life to be? Ideally, I’d like to be able to do creative stuff and work with people and change projects often, but how and where, exactly? In HR? In the writing business? In the NGO field? Is the corporate world right for me or should I freelance? Am I ready for freelancing? Probably not. (…And so on.)
- I worry about worrying. I worry too much. I overthink things. Why can’t I just do things without thinking so much about them?
I knew what I needed to do to solve these issues, but I wanted an external input as well. So I went to a therapist and the discussion was eye-opening.
Me: Yeah, hi, I’ve identified these problems, I think they come from this specific place and here are the steps I plan to take in order to solve them.
Therapist: Yeah, hi back, seems valid. But please chill, you’re going through a quarter-life crisis. Want to talk about this?
So we did talk about that. Apparently quarter-life crisis(es?) are more and more common these days. Why do so many young people feel directionless and purposeless in what is, quite literally, the prime of their lives? It must be those damned devices we spend all our time on. Technology ruined everything!
On a more serious note, the fact that we’re connected to everything that’s happening in the world accentuates this feeling of unease and meaninglessness that many of us have. It’s a combination of analysis paralysis, fear of missing out, the paradox of choice. There are literally billions of things I could be doing right now, how can I be sure the one that I’m actually doing is the best one?
But there’s also good news here, I think. Maybe we are very fortunate to go through a quarter-life crisis, because, if handled correctly, it decreases the chances of having a midlife crisis. Common sense says that if I find my true path and my purpose in life now, I won’t have to deal with feelings of regret or major revelations when I’m 58 and it’s too late for them.
So, for the upcoming year(s), I’m experimenting things more consciously, taking a bit of time to chill and trying to not be so hard on myself.
That’s the plan for overcoming my quarter-life crisis.
Even though, to be honest, I probably won’t live 100 years.
So it’s more of a third-of-life crisis.
But, y’know, semantics.
