About a week ago, I found myself in the predicament of having to fix a broken part on my beloved Honda Civic. The driver side mirror was hanging on for dear life following a quarrel with an enraged automatic gate a few nights before. It looked like Mufasa holding on to a cliff for dear life. That automatic gate was Scar and if anything, I was Simba. Really f*cking upset and helpless.
After about an hour of sulking, I sucked it up, put on my big girls pants, an XL pair of Hanes sweats, and took to the internet for help. With the aid of Wikihow and confidence bestowed upon me by my big girl sweatpants, I decided to fix the mirror myself. But come on, this is college. I don’t know jack sh*t about cars and I don’t even own a basic set of tools.
Courtesy: Pets Lady
Walmart was the easiest store to reach without getting pulled over by Tallahassee PD for having what barely passed as a driver side mirror. The hardware aisle was like stepping foot onto the surface of another planet in a galaxy far, far away. The only other person browsing the tools was a guy that looked old enough to be my father and had tattoos bad enough to suggest he’s made very poor life choices. I stood in the fluorescently-lit aisle among rows of foreign metal objects, contemplating what ratchet or ratcheting screwdriver to buy. After at least half an hour of staring in perplexity at every product on that aisle, I walked toward the registers with both a ratcheting screwdriver and a ratchet in hand. As I swiped my credit card after glancing at the purchase total, I thought to myself, “…this is what adults do…” I was hardcore adulting in that very second, buying hardware and tools that I’d never used in my entire life.
Buying tools shouldn’t have incited my weekly quarter-life crisis. But it did. These life crises start with the most random little things happening throughout the day. Like next week I’ll probably be buying toilet paper in bulk at Costco and start freaking out about how I’m a kind-of-adult. Because only adults buy toilet paper in packs bigger than a dozen.
In the wise words of my Youtube spirit animal, Jenna Marbles
1. “Being an adult is when you have to spend your money on stuff that you hate.”
Like a ratcheting screwdriver. Or a ratchet. Or a 48 pack of three-ply toilet paper.
A quarter-life crisis may also be onset by recurring things that you notice throughout the week or month. Like now, I think of everything I buy in terms of grocery money. I’ll find myself on Zara’s website during a major sale, spending an hour with two tops and a mini dress in my cart but without actually hitting ‘checkout’. Because that’ll get me half of my grocery list, including two pints of Ben and Jerry’s. Buy one get one free of course.
In theory, clothes might make more sense to purchase. You get multiple wears out of a new outfit but two pints of Ben and Jerry’s will last one week, tops. Out of theory, how absurd does it sound to have a nearly bare fridge and instead a new mini dress?
2. Being an adult is not always spending a bunch of money on stuff you don’t necessarily need.
3. All money is hypothetically food money. Along with rent money, gas money, tuition money and occasionally beer money, but only if it’s football season.
The most common trigger for a quarter-life crisis occurs during any time spent with extended family or old friends. Let’s cue the standard talk about how college is going and the dreaded question that we’ve all been asked at one time or another.
“Well what are your plans after you graduate?” Code for “What the hell are you doing with life?”
Courtesy: KC Green
It’s difficult to hide internal panic while searching for a decent answer that everyone may want to hear. A short term answer may come to mind while chatting with the entire family over Thanksgiving dinner. But this may get you pondering a long term answer. What the hell are you doing with life? Where do you want to live? How many kids will you have? Will your family pet be a cat or dog? Or something offbeat, like a sugar glider? Every single question that could possibly be thought about the future.
There is a universal answer.
4. “I don’t know.”
Some people do. Some don’t. And I’ve learned that both are okay. Not everybody in college has a 10 year plan that includes a specified career, baby names and whether or not the family summer home should have a bay window.
However, an occasional mini quarter-life crisis might be healthy to get thoughts rolling and ideas flowing. But stressing about every little thing that may or may not happen in the future won’t bring you closer to finding answers. We’re not supposed to know everything in our late teens and early 20s. These are the years that we find the hardware and tools to create who we might want to be. Those may include making stupid mistakes, bizarre decisions and whole lot of uncomfortable holiday conversation.
If you’re ever full-blown adulting and start to panic, just remember:
5. Adulting is wearing your big girl pants 24/7 and eventually they become woman pants, or a maxi skirt, or sweatpants, basically whatever you want them to be. Because you’re an adult and that decision is up to you.