1/4Life

I suppose I've been having a quarter-life crisis for several years now.

Like Jane, I got out of college and couldn't get a job in my field. In fact, I couldn't really get any job. I tried for art teacher, secretary, retail, etc. However, when they saw the degree in animation on my application they all had the same question. "Where do you think you'll be 5 years from now?" I wasn't about to answer that I thought I'd still be working at a crappy paper company (yes, I would've been Pam from The Office), so I told the truth, and of course didn't get the job. In my mind I hoped that I would be working for some fabulous animation company. OK - honestly, I would've been happy at a crappy animation company - just to be doing the work in my field.

The one thing I wouldn't have answered would be that I thought I'd be working at a library and living back at home with my mother. 5 years haven't passed yet - I still have a little under 2 years, so maybe there's still hope. I don't think I'll get a job at an animation company, but at least there's still time to move away. The library isn't that bad, though I'm not entirely sure I want it as a career.

During the last 3 years and 3 months, I've bounced back and forth between what I thought should be the next step. I've thought about law school, a masters in fashion or interior design, tattooing, and even culinary school. I've toyed with the idea of opening an art store here in Lake City. I'm caught between the idea of staying where I am and moving. (Though usually that's hindered by the fact that I can't ever seem to save any money)

Of course, maybe all of this isn't a true "crisis", just life. It takes time to figure shit out sometimes, and while I may not be sure about the future, I'm not too bad off where I am.

Late Bloomer?

I remember talking about the quarter-life crisis phenomenon near the end of college, but I've never really felt like I was in one. Of course, I didn't hit my big teenage rebellion until I was 19, so maybe it's still coming.

Like most people my age, though, I have been doing my own share of wandering and looking for "my place" in society/the world/the universe. I moved up to DC a few months after college, sight unseen, not knowing any one. I can confess now that I did this mainly for two reasons: 1.) to have something to propel me out of Florida (which is not a terrible place, just the place where I was born, grew up, and went to school, and I wanted something new) and 2.) to get away from living in my parents' house. My parents are pretty great, but eventually that arrangement would probably have ended tragically.

After my first DC job left me ready to come running back to my parents' house in Florida and to declare defeat by DC, I managed to find another one that I've (generally speaking) liked.

But now it's time to move on from that as well. I suppose now is as good a time as any to announce it, so here goes! Over Labor Day, I proposed to my long-term and long-distance boyfriend, and he said yes, which is always nice. He teaches in Columbus, Ohio, and can't relocate, so I'm moving from DC to join him. I have just over a week of work left here, then a week to finish packing, and then I'm off! I plan to work as a consultant to my current company from Columbus and concentrate much more on free-lance and creative writing (and possibly other art projects). And no, no date yet. I'm not ready to get into all the wedding hysteria yet.

Now that I write it out so briefly here, that does seem like a quarter-life crisis (I just turned 26 a couple weeks ago). But it really doesn't feel like that while I'm living it. I feel more like I've given DC a chance and realized that, although it has a lot to offer and I've enjoyed most of my time here, it's not the city for me (more on this in a couple weeks when I pick the topic). On the other hand, I've found someone who is the person for me, so I might as well be with him while I give a new city a try. My visits to Columbus have really impressed me--so far the city (away from the campus) seems to have a good soul--and I'm really excited about the move. Plus, it will be nice to have Congressional representation again, although I don't yet know who those people will be.

MFA

I sort of think my whole life has been a series of unending kinds of crises, so I'm not too sure if I can call my current reevaluation of my life any different than when I decided to be a filmmaker in high school.

See, that's what is called starting "in medias res," because I didn't explain what my crisis was before I started talking about it. Hooked? Well, as you all know and could probably tell from the title, my current situation-that-might-be-viewed-as-a-crisis-by-losers-in-law-school is me going to poetry school for an MFA. See, for a couple of brief semesters I was taking pre-med classes a few years ago, and then I decided that poetry was what I wanted to do, so even though it would put me in a substantial amount of debt and not guarantee me any kind of steady income in my life ever for as long as I live, I dropped all of the pre-med and applied to MFA programs. Now I'm almost done with my MFA here in Houston.

But maybe what is different about this phase in my life is that unlike rock star/astronaut/filmmaker/rock star/novelist/doctor/rock star, I am fully planning on continuing with the poetry writing and hopefully eventually teaching. So much so that I am applying to phds right now, which would be another 5 years of edumacation. So I guess I can understand the need to evaluate one's life in the mid-twenties.

For me the major catalyst for all of this latest change and evaluation started when I taught middle school. Long story short (you've all heard it before)- Sucked, people dumb, students lame, public school bureaucracy unsalvageable. That's when I was really in a funk for a while. I applied to 50 fucking jobs, and the only two I got were at a call center in Lake City where they hire everybody (I quit after I discovered they were going to pay me less than they had promised) and a job as a bag boy at Publix. I moved in with Laurie and her then boyfriend in a house in the Tallahassee ghetto at which we routinely had prostitutes bringing their johns onto our porch. I reenrolled in school to take pre-med classes. I aced them all, but all the pre-med students were whiny jerks, and it just wasn't any fun. My friends in Tallahassee who were all doing poetry stuff seemed to have so much fun, and although I could talk to them about poetry, I felt disconnected from the academic group. So after taking a class with Barbara Hamby, I decided "Fuck all this financial security business, Jeeves, I want to go to poetry school." Poetry was what I did that I liked the best, so why shouldn't I find a way to do that and get paid (someday, perhaps in crackers. Maybe the kind with peanut butter in the middle.) So I applied and got in the end.

Now things are going pretty well, and I'm happy with the decisions I've made, even if I can't get any of you guys to read or like poetry. Oh well! At least I've managed to talk everybody into agreeing that the Original Series is way better than Next Gen.

PS - A BSG milestone - this is the 800th time on Blog Supergroup that I've posted about poetry. A celebration is in order, I believe!

i really didn't mean to suck...

i missed my day!!!
thanks for picking it up jane, and i'll cover yours.
i spent pretty much the whole day sunday on the phone with a very good friend i hadn't spoken to in a really long time, so the post didn't happen.
anyway, my connection ain't the speediest right now, so i'm gonna have to catch the show later.
i just hit the big 25 myself, so i guess i'm really at the QLC point, but i think i'm okay - i'm in a job that could potentially be a long-term career, which is great since i dropped out of college: my boss has expressed that she wouldn't mind my succeeding her when she retires in a few years, so if i want to stay in human resources forever, i could do that. it would eventually pay enough to get by on, even though the ymca is non-profit. i might not mind sticking with it, since it allows me to be nit-picky about details, and nobody else knows labor law at all so i can make up whatever bull-honkey i want and they'll believe it. that's kind of fun. i would like to own a home, but i'm resigned to renting as long as we live in southern cal, and we've got a retirement place set up in washington state as soon as we have enough money... so if i ever do write the books i keep thinking about, that might be sooner rather than later.
i'm basically content with life, or would be if we had a little more cash. anyone need a personal trainer?

Quarterlife crisis, anyone?

Hi guys, it's me, Jane. I know I'm posting out of turn, but I'm covering Linda's spot this week. My topic of choice is rather multifaceted, so for you commenters and other BSG posters, feel free to address any (or all) aspects. Whichever moves you. Our topic of the week, if you can't guess, is the Quarterlife Crisis. We BSG bloggers are all in our mid (or in my case, late, but we don't need to focus on that) twenties, and I suspect that most of us have had, are having or will have a quarterlife crisis at some point pretty soon.

So what is a quarterlife crisis (QLC)? Growing up, I'd always heard of The Midlife Crisis, where stereotypically one freaks out at the impending arrival of old age, gets divorced, dates people way too young for one's age bracket, and buys a sports car. I first heard about QLCs when I was in the middle of mine. I'd say mine began my senior year of college (2001) - when I discovered that despite having been told all my life that a college degree would land me a great job, no one wanted to hire me - and ended with the penning of my manifesto in Fall 2005. I don't know if Melissa will remember this, but she was the one who first brought the term QLC to my attention. We had just returned from our first (and hellish) trip to South Korea, had no job, no job prospects and no real interest in real jobs anyway. I don't remember how she heard about QLCs, but when she described it to me I knew that it fit what I was going through exactly.

But what *is* a QLC? you ask. Well, according to wikipedia a QLC is a psychological "crisis" akin to the midlife-crisis, but occurring amongst those ages 21-29. Symptoms include (among other things) feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at one's academic/intellectual level, frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career, confusion of identity, insecurity regarding the near future, and insecurity regarding present accomplishments. (That came from the wikipedia article on QLCs, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety.)

Anyhow, roughly six years after I first heard about this QLC concept, it seems to have hit the mainstream via... well, I was going to write TV show, but that's not the case at all. Quarterlife is an internet-based show. It's shown ONLY on the internet. However, it's not some sort of low-budget, made-for-the-net kind of production; it's got the production quality of a legit TV show. (I heard on NPR that because of the TV writers' strike, TV channels are negotiating with Quarterlife to air it on regular TV, as that show - being set entirely in new-media - had already negotiated a completely different contract with their writers. No clue as to how that will pan out.) Episodes last about fifteen minutes, and are posted on the Quarterlife site every Sunday and Thursday. I've actually found the show pretty engaging, thus far.

In addition to simply being a net show, quarterlife has its own social networking site (a la MySpace and Facebook) as well, where you can create your own profile, upload blogs, vlogs, etc, and even befriend the characters from the show. As a social networking site, quarterlife leaves much to be desired, as it's new and there are still quite a few kinks in the programming. But, never fear! The Quarterlife characters have MySpace pages! No, I don't mean that the actors playing these people have MySpace pages, I mean the characters have them. These pages are maintained as though these characters were real people [example]. They even have blogs, where they blog about things that have happened in the show... and entirely unrelated things like Hillary's candidacy and class divisions in the US. Which totally weirds me out. These are not real people!

So, things to think on this week: What do you think about quarterlife crises as a concept? Have you had one, or are you having one now? What were/are your QLC experiences? What are your thoughts on the Quarterlife internet show? What do you think about the idea of internet based "tv"? What do you think about being able to interact with characters from shows? Have fun!