Kate Car­raway sums up that mod­ern exis­ten­tial angst expe­ri­enced by count­less twen­tysome­things: The Quar­ter­life Cri­sis, a some­what dis­abling mix of akra­sia, apa­thy and ennui brought on by a num­ber of realisations.

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 free­dom and free-for-all indi­vid­u­a­tion. They can’t make any deci­sions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what 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.

Some­what in the midst of such a twen­tysome­thing void myself (or at least I can sense its advance), am I alone in not resign­ing myself to this ‘cri­sis’? This arti­cle seems to sug­gest so, and I doubt this.

As Michael Kim­mel is quoted as saying:

The Quar­ter­life Cri­sis is a kind of antic­i­pa­tory cri­sis: ‘How is my life going to turn out? I don’t have a clue; I don’t have a map; I don’t have a vision for it.’

To sim­ply just accept this sit­u­a­tion seems almost insulting.

Update: Ben Cas­nocha has also writ­ten about The Quar­ter­life Cri­sis, link­ing to some of his other great arti­cles that cover sim­i­lar ground.