- get ready for a 'thrisis'
For most 20-somethings, and a lot of 30-somethings, the road to becoming a genuine grown-up, minus the air quotes, is an increasingly long one. Sure, delaying the onset of adulthood isn't exactly breaking news, but here's what is: People are finally paying attention to the late 20s and early 30s, that gray zone when you're not young enough to be young and not old enough to be old. Forget the quarterlife crisis -- that post-college moment of clarity when you realize that working at a job actually requires -- you know -- work. This is a "thrisis" -- an uneasiness people experience as they hit the big 3-0. Or the big 3-uh-oh, as we like to call it.
These feelings of anxiety crept into our own lives as we left our 20s. Our peers -- whether single or married, with or without children, unemployed or climbing the corporate ladder -- had to two primary questions as they neared 30:
• Is this what it feels like to be an adult?
• And am I normal?
This isn't your mother's 30.
These choices come with the pressure to not only have it all, but to make it perfect -- the HGTV-worthy house, gifted children, high-powered career, and soul mate. A tough current economic climate has made it difficult for people of all ages to mark the "traditional" adult milestones, making adulthood even more complicated.
In addition to the pressure for perfection, today, we also have the added anxiety of living our lives more publicly than ever before. Thanks to social networking and other forms of digital dishing, not only can we spend hours navel-gazing online, but we can also gaze at each other's navels via social networking sites.
Now you can log onto Facebook or Twitter and find out that your younger cousin is pregnant (again), your best friend got a promotion, and your college roommate is engaged. It's easier to compare and contrast our friends' life trajectories to our own and then blog, tweet, text, and instant message about it.
The numbers are mostly about 20-somethings hitting the sociological milestones of "emerging adulthood": graduating from college, getting married, buying a house, having kids, etc. The fact is, we're not doing these things in the order our parents did, if we're doing them at all.
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