Quarter-Life Crisis

Today is my birthday. Twenty-six years ago today, I was born. My parents started their family. A couple weeks ago I began to reflect on my forthcoming birthday. I'll still technically fall into the mid-twenties category, but I'm feeling so awkward. I actually think turning 30 may be a little better than turning 26.

I have been calling it my quarter-life crisis, because, well, I'm just not mid-life yet! I cried when I turned 23. I don't know why. I had a nice apartment, nice car, been married for six months, looking for houses, still in college, good job. What did I have to be upset about? 24 was fine, even 25 was ok (just ok, not fine), but 23 made me realize that I can't blame anything I do on my youth anymore. I'd always been a pretty responsible and mature person, but even if I wanted to do something stupid, I couldn't just say "well, I was young and stupid" anymore.

Now that I'm 26, I've accomplished quite a lot. I've been married for 3 and a half years, have a cute little starter home, graduated from college, landed a great job, and am even a mommy! I think the Urban Dictionary summed up my quarter life crisis the best:

"Usually occurs sometime in your twenties, a few years out of school and still feel as though you're waiting for you're life to begin.

For most people it will be around twenty five years of age (give or take a year or two) as this tends to be when you're way of thinking is starting to change beyond that of a high school or college student. Most people realize they've reached this age if they're starting to refer to teens as 'kids'.

It's an age where a lot people start developing a more realistic outlook in life and start feeling that if they haven't accomplished certain things in life they thought they would by then that they may never (Even though this isn't true and they still have a long time to attain their goals and dreams).

This tends to be the age where regrets about decisions made in High School, College etc start becoming more apparent. The classes one didn't take, or could have tried harder in, the teams one didn't try out for, and wished they had and so forth can sometimes cause a lot of regret and even resentment of those that are doing things one wishes they'd done.

Some people will respond to a quarter life crisis by rushing into various landmark type goals in life (ie, getting married, moving out from your parents house, getting your first house, getting your first real job, having kids)."

 Ok, even though I have the house, the job, the kid, and the marriage part down, I still feel as though my life is waiting to really take course and these are all of the things that just happened along the way. I always thought I'd be in my "real" house by now, not just my starter. I always thought I'd be more financially free, but now I'm paying student loans (I have no idea why I though that because I knew the whole time that I'd have to pay 'em back).