Quarter-life crisis, or when the realisation hits you in the middle of the night

Being a twenty-something girl often means making stupid decisions without getting noticed, which is, honestly, one of the advantages of being this age. Sleeping half of the day and party all night, bad fashion choices, going on dates that scream with red flags but you do it anyway,… this all is just a silver lining before getting to a stage of self-realisation and starting to think about serious stuff like the future and what paths you decide to take when the “real life” comes.

Having just received my Master diploma (and to my shock quite unceremoniously so) I arrived at the crossroads of changing from a wild child and a comfortable student to a confused girl in her hoodie and converse sneakers with a backpack on her back trying to figure out which way to go; the right one or the easy one. Now of course. putting so much “blood, sweat and tears” to my studies makes me want to choose the right path. The path full of woes, effort and hard work with a little hope of achieving my goal and being remembered for making at least the tiniest difference in the world.

I am sure that the previous sentence probably made you cringe with the overflow of cliché… but I can tell you what makes ME cringe. The constant hate, falsehood and blaming other people for our gaffes. I´m not saying that I am any different… but I try to not be that way and if possible, try to earn what I want with my own hard work without “sinking other people´s ships” on my way if at least a little possible.

Two weeks ago I finished with my summer job which I started with a hope to earn some money for my grand post-graduation trip to Edinburgh (yes, it´s still me, the history freak). While the job was a great way of getting decent sum of money quickly I didn´t really like it. Not because the work was hard or boring, but because every day it resulted in me going home with a headache. It was an office full of women who seemed nice at the first sight but as soon as you vanished from the office to go for a quick wee, they turned their back on you and started to break you to pieces; from the way of clothing to your personal business. How do I know? Because they did it with any one of their colleagues, didn´t even mind me, the little intern, sitting in the office with them. Don´t get me wrong, not all of them were the same way, I made friends with one or two because I knew they were trying to steer clear of such relationships.

When I came home, I told my parents and what they told me was a shocker; nowadays, it works like this almost everywhere, no matter what kind of environment it is. People play a one-man show, kicking other people out of their way trying to stand in the spotlight alone while playing dirty games.

The sentence got me thinking… and worrying. What will I do once I find a decent job and realise what I have gotten myself into? If it´s really like my parents say, how am I going to survive? Going home with unbearable migraines every day is not what I have signed up for and studied hard days and nights for all those years. It´s going to take balls (which I don´t have) to stand straight in this ancient process called survival of the fittest.

I am currently on my last month in Leipzig, trying to bring everything to an end with my head held straight. It´s also the time of me spending every possible moment by the computer browsing websites with job advertisements and perfecting my “freshly graduate” CV to the gods. I´ve been doing this for a while, researching like crazy, trying to find the perfect job suitable for my qualification. Even though I have just graduated, I´ve already done my fair share of job interviews and received quite a number of rejection. Slowly but surely I am starting to realize that in my home country (Slovakia) it´s going to be a real crusade to find a job suitable for me. That´s why I am starting to realize that looking for options abroad must be taken into consideration. And I know that I would be crazy to hope for a dream job right from the start and that itis next to impossible and that everyone needs to start somewhere… but I hope, somewhere deep inside, that by working hard I can do it someday. Hope is important, without hope we would be lost.

If you managed to keep on reading and reached this part, you deserve a medal, honestly. I know this might seem like quite an unusual blogpost from me, but as I said at the complete beginning, I am going to share everything, even my deepest sh*t written down on a piece of paper in the middle of the night. As I am thinking right now, this might have been a representation of my quarter-life crisis; a crisis with the capital C. And maybe I am just scared. Scared of the end of one grand chapter, standing in front of new one, ready to open and pull me into a world of new choices, opportunities, obstacles and hopefully, fruitful results.

Thank you for bearing with me and hearing me out…

Until next time,

čauko, Lenka