Dealing with the quarterlife crisis

It was a hot January morning. I was driving through the Kalahari on my way back to Jozi, willing to do pretty much anything if I just didn't have to come back to my increasingly uncomfortable comfort zone.

I had just spent the previous two weeks trying to dream up ways to get unstuck in love, work and life. I had the music (to be more specific, a bunch of my sister's high school compilation tapes) blasting away at top volume, while trying to think of some practical strategies to deal with my quarterlife crisis. Or to put it this way, I was (and still is!) in desperate need of a way to kill that crippling realisation that there are so many opportunities out there that it is impossible to make any regrets-free decisions.

Wear sunscreen, the radio suddenly tells me. I hadn't heard the Sunscreen Song, an old favourite, in ages. And unexpectedly I got some advice on dealing with the QLC - what to do, where to go, when to do it, who to do it with, how much money to do it for - from Mary Schmich's now famous Chicago Tribune column:

"Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't."

Point is, you don't have to have it all figured out. Who does anyway?

Like Mary says: Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

So relax, have fun, and keep walking. New opportunities will come your way if you're moving forward; not if you're stuck in limbo. So just make sure you keep going.

There's also no point in comparing yourself to people who (seems to) have the wind at their backs. I'm extremely competitive - hence my feeling of failure when thinking of a, who is on her way to Ethiopia to cover the AU Summit, or f, who can convert a looooooooong distance relationship into a marriage, or j, who is pocketing the big bucks on a tropical island in the middle of the Atlantic.

Thankfully, Mary's got some advice for us closet competitors too:

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

So yes, I'm feeling a little left behind at the moment. But just give me a minute...

PS Some getting-on-top-of-the-world-tips from Mary:
* Sing.
* Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
* Do one thing every day that scares you.
* Floss.
* Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
* Stretch.
* Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
* Travel.
* Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
And best of all:
* You are not as fat as you imagine.