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Loving Where I’m Going (Which is… Still Undecided)

posted 8th August 2010    Written by: Lindsey    CATEGORY: Life Lesson, Lindsey, Season 3, Travel, What I've Learned

INTRODUCING LINDSEY

I realized my ‘lateral drift’ of life was ending and I had no idea what to do next.

This May I returned to my small hometown in Michigan after spending a year and a half of my post-university life in several western states and quite a few passenger seats in between. Before this drifting lifestyle, I was studying engineering and before that was just a shy girl from Middle America. 

And this is where my story, if we could start my story in this moment, begins again.

Quarterlife Crisis was a term I’d heard while in college and brushed it aside as something irrelevant. I was on track: an engineering student with all the makings of a great engineer (whatever the hell THAT is). Life changed at graduation when I declared 2009: “a year dedicated to Everything-But-Engineering.”

I desperately needed a break from equations, and resume building extracurriculars.

Self-imposed freedom allowed love and passion abundantly into my life. In abandoning everything that I knew, I realized I am happiest in control of my life, pursuing worthwhile goals, and finding purpose in all that I do.  As a self-professed Freedom Fighter, I quickly learned that declaring freedom requires guts when you’re waist deep in student loan debt, with tons of plans but no idea how to act on anything, and pressure from everyone and their brother who knows about the engineering degree to “get a job” already.

My Quarterlife Crisis became official this May, after I realized my “lateral drift” of life was ending and I had no idea what to do next…

I was finishing up the snowboarding season in Tahoe, working at Applebee’s and utterly confused about what to do with a heart full of freedom and a wallet full of nothing. Discovering Stratejoy and the Joy Equation came soon after this, and I was elated to know there are other amazing young women out there who are taking charge of their lives and overcoming their quarterlife crisis in the same way that I am.

The Stratejoy Tribe fell into my lap by a stroke of luck at just the right time. My travels have led me to quite a few different mentors, but none so relevant to me, right now. I am the first to admit: it’s easy to give up when I feel isolated and a bit insane for envisioning my dream life.

I credit a Yogi Tea bag for leading me home to small town Michigan this summer. I found this tea bag tag that said, “You can’t love where you’re going, unless you love where you come from.” And it hit me – I could keep wandering, but I really needed to be home to build the foundation of love, which I can take out into the world. So here I am today, living with my parents, feeling quite unsuccessful on the exterior (still a waitress, still broke), but optimistic that I am in the absolute right place to get the most out of my life.

My greatest failing now is that I want too much, too soon. I feel a pressure in my head, because it is so full of ideas and plans and I can hardly live in the “now” long enough to make any of it happen, besides in random paths. And randomness doesn’t make great things happen, especially when interspersed with long rants about life-confusion and hours in a zombie state of “what the fuck am I doing?”

Nope, great things happen when you push yourself to be responsible.

I have decided that successful freedom is about creating your own rules that you love to follow. It’s about recognizing your Quarterlife Crisis and working through it.

I am brand new to the blogosphere, but I am so excited to get to meet all you gutsy girls! I’m stoked to connect and share my experiences on this journey as we each embark on our quests for greatness. I’m officially throwing off my shyness cloak, and am here to join in the conversation about the reality that our lives are ours for the taking.

My name is Lindsey. I am in full-on Quarterlife Crisis mode. I am here to blog for love, community, and belief in a better future.

Hello world! I’m officially a blogger!

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My Impatience with Patience

posted 28th July 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

With my internship ending and my time in Montreal rapidly coming to a close, I am asked on a near daily basis about my next step. My response is usually “My parents’ basement”.

They tend to think that I’m joking.

If only.

Yes, at the ripe old age of 29 and a half I am probably moving into my parent’s home, for at least a month, in the ultimate act of the boomerang child.

There are a couple of reasons for this.  Well, really, only one reason. Money. Being effectively unemployed for almost a year, a consequence of doing unpaid internships for my grad program, have left my cash supplies thin. This coupled with the fact that I have neither job nor prospects and the fact that I do want to move back to New York (where my parents live) makes moving home a logical act.

I am not overjoyed with this fact, and I’m sure my parents aren’t thrilled either, but reality is what it is.

What bugs me, more than the social stigma associated with moving home, is the general sense of uncertainty that dominates my life. I would be totally cool with moving home for the month of August, for example, if I knew that I would be moving out in September.  But I don’t know that. I don’t know that the graduate degree I’ve been working so diligently towards for the past two years will do anything to help me secure a job that pays enough to allow me to repay my ever burgeoning student loan debt, never mind one that I find intellectually and emotionally engaging.

And, after a long standing indifference to serious relationships (I used to view them as freedom inhibiting chains) I feel emotionally ready to be with “the one.” Could someone please tell him to show up, already?

The German poet Rainier Maria Rilke wrote to be patient with everything that remains unresolved in your heart, to love the uncertainty itself like books written in a foreign language, and that eventually we may, if we’re lucky live our way into an answer. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but as a member of the “do something” generation, patience isn’t a life skill I’ve developed -  I mean,  I’m the kind of person who reads three books simultaneously, while carrying on four separate chat conversations, and writing an essay for school- but clearly it’s something that the universe is trying to teach me.

I shoot off a fellowship application and I’m informed that I’ll hear back in two months. I e-mail a networking contact and I get an out-of-office reply informing me she’s out of the office for the next 3 weeks. The more I push, for certainty, the more my life falls apart. I’m like a bull in the world’s teeniest china shop leaving a trail of smashed porcelain with my every movement.

I find myself bickering with friends over the stupidest things, I demand answers before their time, I pray to God for favors with a timestamp, and my stress is beginning to manifest physically.  I’ve developed what I jokingly call my sexy eye twitch, reoccurring bouts of insomnia, and a shoulder tension so severe that they’ve begun creating a shooting numbness down my left arm (nope it’s not a stroke, but I may be pinching a nerve). I’m starting to worry that my impatience is going to kill me.

However, I’ve begun to realize that while I can’t change my circumstance, I can change how I react to things.

I’ve bitten the bullet and started meditating. I’ve begun filling the pages of my journal which had been gathering dust, and I’ve started working out regularly. I’m also making a concerted effort to do less, to worry less and to just accept how lucky I am: I still have money in my bank account, my health, and fantastic friends. In fact I’m writing this from a friend’s couch in Vermont having spent the weekend watching two very close friends who are very much in love get married.

The stress twitch isn’t gone and I’ve accepted that I’m paying for a massage to deal with the shoulder pain, but last night, for the first time in weeks I slept through the night. And that is progress.


photo credit: acdme

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