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People who had a quarter-life crisis in their 20's, did you do right to stress?

Without going into too much detail…

  • 21
  • Dropped out of Uni (ie. I’ve started falling behind ‘the pack’)
  • Still living with my parents (have lived alone for periods)
  • Frustrated, have been repeating the same mistakes and life is currently going in a loop.
  • Not fully settled on a specific career
  • Thinking of a couple of nuclear options I could try to move things on.

I want to know if I have reason to stress or if I should just give it time and enjoy the ride. Seeing as any sort of renewed degree-pursuing will eat up another several years starting anew from square one.

Edit: Thanks for all of this life advice everyone. It is genuinely really reassuring

OceanSoap ,

Dude, you’re barely in your 20s. You’re fine.

If you continue with the school route, do it for the least amount of $$ you can.

I dropped out of art school at 21, and got my AA at 37. Finally have an actual “career” now.

intensely_human ,

Oh you’re always “right” to stress about life. Life is fucking hard, and full of problems, and if you aren’t neck deep in problems in your life it’s because you’re unconscious.

But for that very same reason, you’re always “right” to skip the stress and just get on with the next task. If you have a hard time doing that, I suggest drawing a map of the meaning in your life.

If you don’t know how to do that, look for a class called “Maps of Meaning” and watch it. It’s a free course, published on youtube. No homework or anything; just all the lectures videotaped and published on youtube.

That one course has done more to make my life functional than anything else I’ve encountered.

SubArcticTundra OP ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ll give it a watch. Sourcing meaning from the right things has indeed been one of my missteps in the past. Music sometimes inspires visions in my head, and my brain saw them as memories, except in the future and they gave me meaning. The bubble burst when I waited for them to happen/tried to make them happen, and they didn’t.

electric_nan ,

You’ll be fine. You are incredibly young. I just started over with a new career at 45. I have friends my age who are back in school. Maybe try not to have kids since that will make this all harder. But then again, have em if you want em.

Perhapsjustsniffit ,

I went to uni right out of highschool. Became a paramedic. Has a good career but it just wasn’t what I wanted. By 25 I quit and was travelling doing odd jobs or whatever I could. Meeting people, seeing places. It wasn’t easy but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’ve been many places, done many things, met so many interesting people and completely changed my world view from when I was 20 because of it all.

I say don’t let society tell you what is right or normal. Find your own path. Do things you find interesting and don’t make your life about your work. Now I am old and have medical issues. I’ll be 50 this year. I’m glad I lived while I had the opportunity. It’s your life make it what you want it to be not someone else’s idea of life.

SubArcticTundra OP ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

This is reassuring. Thanks

13esq ,

I wouldn’t bother with a degree unless it is required for your chosen career path.

You’ll save time and money by entering the workforce in a lower position now and working towards a promotion.

There are a lot of people out there with degrees entirely unrelated to their work and or earning wages similar to people who didn’t bother with uni and they have a student loan to pay back on top of that.

If you have your heart set on higher education, look at the open university, courses are designed so that you can do them in your free time and are substantially cheaper than “proper” uni with degrees that are worth just as much.

eupraxia ,
@eupraxia@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Yep absolutely!

For me, it felt like my life was quickly progressing away from a youth I was not ready to leave for inexplicable reasons. In the end I ended up taking a nuclear option once I realized how uncomfortable I was with my future, and while it’s not been easy it’s been absolutely worth it.

Even though you may be stuck in the same habits and mistakes, they can be rewritten and you’ll be surprised how quickly life changes once you find what makes you authentically happy. A lot can happen in 3 years and I guarantee you’ll still be young at 24. You can still be young at twice that. There’s a lot of life ahead of you, especially once you take calculated risks to improve your future and make the most of the youth you still have. You may not know what exactly will make you happy, but trust in yourself and your judgement to find it as you go.

SubArcticTundra OP ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

Oh wow, you read my mind! Yes, I don’t feel ready to move on from my youth just yet because I feel it was deficient in a few things (especially with the 2 years lost to COVID). I’m quite tempted to just say f**k to career development, move out to the city where my childhood friends live, get a minimum wage job, and just spend some time with them for a bit. Just to meet the needs of my current self, now.

cyberpunk007 , (edited )

I’m a bit older than you, and I know for my age group things are real hit and miss in terms of success and ability to do things. Your age group is just getting fucked. I’m sorry :(

We don’t have the same level of opportunity the boomers had, or the money, and now all that wealth and power is theirs and they’ve tightened the grip. It’ll take a lot of dying out or a revolution to fix anything, I feel.

Fwiw, I dropped out and reentered the following year and completed it. From there I just kept building my career and I’m doing pretty well for myself at this point.

**Don’t give up. **

Fudoshin ,
@Fudoshin@feddit.uk avatar

Thought I was having a quarter life crisis then at 40 realised - “Oh no, that’s just life”.

It’s just bullshit and downhil all the way form birth til death.

Get used to it.

Scrath ,

Thanks for the motivational speech

Fudoshin ,
@Fudoshin@feddit.uk avatar

You’re welcome. My wisdom normally costs money but you can have that for free.

Ubettawerk ,

I also dropped out very early. Struggled with that disappointment for a long time. Moved in with my SO’s parents and lived with them for years!

We moved out and got a rental when I was 25. I’m 29 now and working on my career in banking. Started exercising the last couple years and have been keeping up with it consistently. I feel like it was only in the last few years that I felt I was making progress but really needed some optimism to keep going. You just never know what’s going to change your life around. Try to improve yourself in any way you can and sometimes that can help you change your trajectory

SubArcticTundra OP ,
@SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

Yes, I just realized recently that it’s not just degrees that make you useful to people, it can also be knowing a ton of small, niche skills – and learning those can be more flexible.

raccoona_nongrata ,
@raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    SubArcticTundra OP ,
    @SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

    The thing to understand about your twenties is you’re afforded the ability to make mistakes and experiment, to take risks.

    Ah, thanks for reminding me about this. I started stressing when I noticed I’d started falling behind my peers progression-wise. But yes I need to, and have time to, experiment

    Sekrayray ,

    So yes and no. Some of this depends on what sort of “loop” you’re stuck in, which I can’t answer unless I have more details. The rest doesn’t depend as much on that.

    On one hand, 21 is extremely young—which means you have an absurd amount of wiggle room and time to course correct, even if you’ve done some really dumb stuff.

    On the other hand, time only starts to move faster and if you don’t commit to course correct at some point you’ll end up a lot older in a way tougher spot.

    I think the answer here is some sort of average of extremes (like it is for most things in life). You shouldn’t worry about the future too much because you’re so young, but you should start taking action to course correct now so that the next 5-10 years are easier.

    HobbitFoot ,

    What mistakes are you repeating?

    Borkdornsorkpor ,

    I dropped out of my university in my first year. I was a music major, and my orchestra director set up a gofundme so that family and friends and teachers from my old high school could all get together to purchase an instrument for me I can use in school because my family was broke and couldn’t afford it. But I stayed at home instead of living on campus, and since my family life was so chaotic, the stress of everything happening at home on top of taking on a huge course load made me lose my academic scholarship, and the thought of taking out student loans to be a gigging musician seemed like a guaranteed way to never escape poverty. I didn’t know what to do. So I did nothing. The deadline passed, and I fell into a deep depression that took years to get out of.

    I had to start working in various blue collar environments until I had enough money to move out with my partner, who turned out to be really shitty once we started living together so then I had to find a place by myself, then I went back to a technical college to get some IT certs, and eventually stumbled into my first “big boy” job doing IT for a large warehouse. Since then, I’ve doubled my salary by hopping between a few different tech jobs, and I even get to play in a local symphony with the same instrument that was given to me for school.

    It took about 5 years of wafting around after dropping out of college, and my mental health was in the shitter for most of that, but going through that stress made me the person I am today, and for the first time in my life, I kind of like who I am. With that said, I didn’t have the time to enjoy life with how much I was working and am trying to make up for lost time now. But it’s so much easier to do that now that I have disposable income and a comfortable place to sleep every night.

    TL;DR Your early 20s suck and there’s going to be a lot of stress – thats unavoidable unless you’re a nepo baby. Just roll with it and don’t forget to have fun every now and then. You’ll figure it out.

    fckreddit ,

    I have been struggling with my career for about 4-5 years now. I am already 33. Life takes a while to settle. There is no rush and definitely no need to stress about it. Loops are pretty common. You are not too old. 21 is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

    stevecrox ,

    There will always be someone who is beating you in a metric (buying houses, having kids, promotions, pay, relationships, etc..) fixating on it will drive you mad.

    Instead you should compare your current status against where you were and appreciate how you are moving forward

    As for age

    During university my best mate was 27 who dropped out of his final year, grabbed a random job, then went to college to get a BTEC so they could start the degree.

    It was similar in my graduate intake, we had a 26 year old who had been a brickie for 5 years before getting a comp sci degree.

    The first person I line managed was a junior 15 years older than me, who had a completely different career stream. They had the house, kids, had managed big teams, etc.. honestly I learnt tons from them.

    SubArcticTundra OP ,
    @SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml avatar

    This is encouraging to hear. I’m actually considering applying to a degree apprenticeship. I only found out about them recently but they seem to combine the best of both worlds

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