Quarter-life crisis
Mar. 31st, 2003 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI disagree: April is not the cruelest month, March is.
Or so I'm starting to believe. This isn't the first time it's been a bad month. I just mentioned earlier today that it seemed three of my friends broke up with their boyfriends within the space of a week or two, during March, last year. And don't even get me started on the one before that.
Due to the influence of MSN conversations last week, my screen name for a short while was "I am Holly's irrational unhappiness" (it made more sense if you saw "I am Allison's absurd life through frames" and "I am Jack's" something I don't remember on my friends list). It was actually in the course of talking to Allison's absurd life through frames that the phrase "irrational unhappiness" was generated.
When I tried to explain said irrationally unhappy state to Katie she thought it sounded like I had lots of reasons to be unhappy...and maybe I do. Nothing very big in itself, but a very powerful cumulative effect of subtle things--and not noticing them or not thinking much of them sometimes only seems to make it worse. I'm not often very unhappy, and so I don't handle it well. Being happy is much more fun. And when I don't really know what's making me unhappy...well, that only gets added to the list of reasons I'm unhappy. It's very hard to fix something when you don't know what's wrong.
It's not just me, either. I keep hearing that my friends, or their friends, or whatever are recently lonely, depressed, melancholy, suspecting various mental disorders in varying degrees, stressed, apathetic, bored, wanting to transfer or change their major or take a year off or make some other drastic life change. Drastic life changes aren't bad--they're often good and seem reasonable when one is unhappy--but they do indicate that people are unhappy, are dissatisfied with their lives. And though I know this isn't really true, it seems that the more times you change your mind, the more time you spend being unhappy, the more likely you are to be a loser forever. None of us want to be losers.
Cause I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
--John Mayer
"Why Georgia"
Or so I'm starting to believe. This isn't the first time it's been a bad month. I just mentioned earlier today that it seemed three of my friends broke up with their boyfriends within the space of a week or two, during March, last year. And don't even get me started on the one before that.
Due to the influence of MSN conversations last week, my screen name for a short while was "I am Holly's irrational unhappiness" (it made more sense if you saw "I am Allison's absurd life through frames" and "I am Jack's" something I don't remember on my friends list). It was actually in the course of talking to Allison's absurd life through frames that the phrase "irrational unhappiness" was generated.
When I tried to explain said irrationally unhappy state to Katie she thought it sounded like I had lots of reasons to be unhappy...and maybe I do. Nothing very big in itself, but a very powerful cumulative effect of subtle things--and not noticing them or not thinking much of them sometimes only seems to make it worse. I'm not often very unhappy, and so I don't handle it well. Being happy is much more fun. And when I don't really know what's making me unhappy...well, that only gets added to the list of reasons I'm unhappy. It's very hard to fix something when you don't know what's wrong.
It's not just me, either. I keep hearing that my friends, or their friends, or whatever are recently lonely, depressed, melancholy, suspecting various mental disorders in varying degrees, stressed, apathetic, bored, wanting to transfer or change their major or take a year off or make some other drastic life change. Drastic life changes aren't bad--they're often good and seem reasonable when one is unhappy--but they do indicate that people are unhappy, are dissatisfied with their lives. And though I know this isn't really true, it seems that the more times you change your mind, the more time you spend being unhappy, the more likely you are to be a loser forever. None of us want to be losers.
Cause I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
--John Mayer
"Why Georgia"
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 11:07 am (UTC)Eliot's lines were a take-off on the beginning of the Canterbury Tales anyway, so we can blame Chaucer for choosing the wrong month :-P
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 12:56 pm (UTC)To those who'd say it's a little odd to have random bits of poetry come to mind during one's morning commute, I'd say, well, I'm a little odd. And that walking to school is really boring because it's always the same; my mind tends to occupy itself elsewhere. Besides, "April is the cruelest month" and "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" are both the beginnings of really long famous poems, and so of course the beginning is going to be the only part that people have actually read and so it'll be famous too!
I'm kidding--I actually did read (nearly) all of the Canterbury Tales last year; I had a class on Chaucer. I was dubious about it at first, but took it only to get out of something else. Anyway, it ended up being really fun, and I think I learned enough to be able to say that Chaucer was saying nice stuff about April, and spring, and pilgrimages. So, here's hoping April has nice stuff even for me, six hundred years later or whatever it is.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 07:32 pm (UTC)A lot's been going on....
Date: 2003-03-31 12:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-31 02:57 pm (UTC)Words
Date: 2003-03-31 08:37 pm (UTC)Dancing Nancies
Sing and dance I'll play for you tonight
And thrill at it all
Dark clouds may hang on me sometimes
But I'll work it out
Best of What's Around
Turns out not where but who you're with
That really matters
And hurts not much when you're around
Lie in our Graves
I can't believe that we would
lie in our graves
Wondering if we had
spent our living days well
I can't believe that we would
lie in our graves
Dreaming of things that we
might have been
Pig
I'm saying open up
And let the rain come pouring in
Wash out this tired notion
That the best is yet to come
But while you're dancing on the ground
Don't think of when you're gone
So Right
This time now is so alive
Everybody’s trance dancing tonight
So beautiful and so strange
It was empty till you came
hehehe
Date: 2003-04-04 08:24 am (UTC)btw: Hello.
Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-05 10:36 am (UTC)(And hello yourself.)
Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-05 11:25 am (UTC)To the best of my knowledge, I was the first to use and popularize said term...
How are you?
Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 01:21 pm (UTC)Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 02:49 pm (UTC)Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 03:46 pm (UTC)Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 04:17 pm (UTC)Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 04:27 pm (UTC)Re: hehehe
Date: 2003-04-07 04:32 pm (UTC)It means that my meme of 'quarter life crisis' has spread!!!
Re: hehehe
Date: 2004-10-24 09:59 am (UTC)