quarter-life crisis

there have been two interesting reads which gave me pause in the last few days.

my friend jonathan came across an article discussing the quarter-life crisis. basically the theory goes that this tends to happen in the mid- to late-20s, and is the result of this generation having too much freedom to do what they want. the world is open to them, but they (we) don't know what they want so they bumble around trying lots of things when they get fed up with dealing with other things. its a pretty interesting concept.

i like what i do, but at the end of the day, i'm still not sure what i want to do with the rest of my life. my housemate jakub and i were talking about what we thought we wanted to do after finishing our phds and i mentioned doing a post-doc. not as a criticism, but as an observation, he said, trish, you don't seem like the type (to do a post-doc). you seem like the type to start doing something (like a job or working for myself). i think he's probably right about the former. i'm ready to be done with school (on some level post-docs still are school, you just don't get a degree). i still don't know what i want to do when i graduate, though i definitely have a few ideas. in the closing words of the article i linked to above (pardon the french): "it might just be time to grow the f*** up."

another friend sent me an article about why the 21st century is making people miserable. in summary, we don't interact with people as much, so our ability to deal with annoying people, lines, emotion, etc, is not what it used to be, and on top of that, we don't have as many close friends. i was talking to someone about how i was becoming annoyed with texting, im-ing, and emailing because you could type one thing but you couldn't control how people interpreted what you said, whereas if the conversation was had in person you could observe or hear them (or they you) to get the real meaning from body language or intonation. i was annoyed because i felt like what i was saying was not being "heard" the way i intended it.

the other thing i had been pondering before my friend sent me this link was staying in my co-op versus moving out. i decided to come back to the house at the end of this summer because i think living with this many other people is good for me. it gets frustrating to see the kitchen dirty every day or listen to the same people making inflammatory comments in house meetings, but you learn to deal with it and work it out with people because...well, you live with them. you learn patience and how to live with people who are very different from you. and you learn how to find peace in the midst of the commotion of a busy house. that, for me, has been an invaluable lesson, but one that i know i'm still working on.

my ukulele arrived this weekend. i can play twinkle, twinkle little star now. i'm thoroughly enjoying myself.