Quarter Life Crisis

Have you ever tried to open a screw-top bottle of wine with a corkscrew? Really, it's a blessing in disguise. Now that there's a hole in the top, you have to drink the whole thing. That's just one of the cures for the quarter life crisis.

Let me ask you a question: have you ever reminisced about dead people? I don't mean lost family and friends. I mean people that died long before you were even born. Have you ever dreamed about Descartes' brain in a vat floating in some sci-fi purgatory? Maybe Nietzsche dancing the charleston on God's grave? If so, you may have been an Arts Student.

You may have felt important while at the Miscellaneous University President's little soiree, sipping tiny glasses of sherry and acting like you drink it all the time. Back then, you could remember history in pieces, and still seem intellectual. Chairman Mao was great guy. Castro's Cuba is a flawless beacon of light to the Western World. After all, who wouldn't want to smoke a joint with Che Guevara? He's on my wall, and yours, and every other person in the old dorms.

Back then, the real world was malleable. Something to be taken and twisted through your revolutionary fingers. The fact that the Lebanese cab driver that took you home from your graduation dinner had a doctorate in neuroscience should have been a clue. You were too drunk for the world's nuance that night.

All of a sudden, all your stoner-circle conversations are nothing but talking about other times you were high. Your textbooks have moved into a box in your parent's basement. One of your roommates seems to leave inordinate amounts of pubic hair on the toilet seat, but you don't want to know who it is. You need the place. It's only two hundred fifty a month, and the mice don't make that much noise. The silverfish are completely silent.

You wake up in the morning and walk off to sit in a cubicle and call random strangers. You tell them all the benefits of Miscellaneous Phone Company, and if you're lucky, they hang up on you. If you're not, they yell for a while. If you're really not, they threaten to sue you for harassment. In those situations, you call your boss over. Your boss is one year younger than you and makes twice your wage. After all, he sat through two semesters towards an MBA before he dropped out.

You go home at night and look yourself in the mirror. Sure, you've gained a few pounds, and your frappachino goatee is long gone. Human Resources declared it unfit for the image their company sees fits to project. There's a tallboy of European beer in one of your hands. It tastes like the words of all those dead people you remember. Douglas Adams came up with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy after a few Gossers, and you spent countless hours discussing the metaphysical properties of that. The word 'brilliant' had been used on more than a few occasions.

You think that the great change in coming in. Your ship is just outside the harbour. All you have to do is wait. Time is just something to be frittered away, until it present's you with a grand gift for your patience. You raise a toast to your reflection, toasting conversations you miss and moments that you haven't yet experienced.

Time is just something to be frittered away. 'Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day,' as Pink Floyd said. After all, Kurt Cobain once worked as a dishwasher. Einstein worked in a patent office. James Joyce eked out a living reviewing other people's work. Sure, maybe you don't have the music to speak to an angry generation, the theory of relativity, or a writing style to inspire the next generation of writers to love or hate. But you must have something.

You can't find your lighter, so you light your cigarette with a long fireplace match that was sitting in a cupboard when you moved into your shitty apartment. That doesn't mean change isn't somewhere on the horizon. All you have to do is wait.

That night, you tried to open a screw-top bottle of wine with a corkscrew. Really, that's a blessing in disguise. Now that there's a hole in the top, you have to drink the whole thing. That's just one of the cures for the quarter life crisis.