Is This a Quarter-Life Crisis?

I had it all planned out: 

• Graduate high school. 
• Attend a university (I went to a community college then transferred, but that doesn’t matter) to get my Psychology degree (I majored in English Literature, and I liked it better, so it worked out for the best.)
• Have my dream career (First I wanted to be a psychologist, then a reporter, and that turned into writer.)
• Get married.
• Have three kids.
• Be a stay-at-home mom to be present and focus on my kids (even though now it is unattainable but would be nice — I wrote this when I was 14.) 

I was set

That was my 10-year plan.  I like to know what is going to happen, and mapping out what I wanted my life to look like created the expectations that it  was all attainable with nothing but hard work, dedication, discipline, and focus. 

So I did exactly that. I graduated high school with a 4.06 grade point average, something I never thought existed.  High school is where I developed my love for literature, writing, and analyzing texts. I flopped from wanting to be a psychologist or be an academic writer. Until I met my advanced placement English teacher. He helped me shape my essays (argumentative being my favorite, alongside literary analysis essays) and really think about the how’s and why’s people should be reading my writings. 

That’s when it clicked: I want to be a writer, a turn from my plan but okay because I would still go to a university. 

However, even though I worked hard and gave it my all, I didn’t go to a university right away. I applied to 10 colleges and got accepted at four. An accomplishment, but how are we going to afford it? There it was. 

University adversity 

In hindsight, this was my first warning that life doesn’t always go your way, but I was 17 and filled with hope. It felt like a part of me shattered. How did I not include that in my plan? Did I forget? Was I a little out of touch with how it all works? Deep Breath. I knew I needed to find a solution. The last thing I needed was to fall behind so soon in my plan, we needed to stick to the plan. I talked about my college fund problem to counselors and people who I knew could help, and they all suggested going to a community college first and transferring to university later.  The derailment of my plans didn’t seem like a huge detour anymore. I felt my body loosen when it all got solved. I knew that I was putting in the hard work. 

I worked part time during my college and university years. My job allowed me to pay for tuition and obtain my degree debt-free, probably one of my proudest accomplishments.  Overall, college was a great experience, though I worked and commuted, so I did miss out on lots of networking opportunities. But my only goal was to complete my degree. Covid-19 affected attendance, but asynchronous classes worked so well for me that I got my best grades during those terms out of the whole four years attending. It was my discipline that helped me power through, that same discipline that’s helping me stick to my plan. 

Stick to my plan

While in college I started dating my now-husband. We’ve known each other since high school and were the “best friends to lovers” trope. This detail further confirmed that life was working just like I had planned it. I was graduating with my degree at 23 with the love of my life supporting me, and now I can focus on landing my dream career of a writer working at a publishing company. I had been working at my part-time retail job for five years, and I knew that I had outgrown that place, but I said that I won’t quit until my dream job lands. 

I was applying to publishers, media companies, and major blog sites I knew. I got ghosted by most of them. 

Deafening silence started to shake my trust in the universe. I don’t get rejections for my work ethic, opportunities come to me naturally.  I am too focused, too dedicated to not get a job offer. I started to slowly doubt my capabilities; what if no one hires me? That would destroy the life I had planned for myself, so I talked it over with my then-boyfriend, who suggested I try fields that I always said no to. I was hesitant, but I knew I needed to land a fulltime job away from retail or  customer service. 

I started looking at everything: business, office management, marketing, social media coordinating, until I came across an ad for a Teacher’s Assistant role for Transitional Kindergarten (TK). TK bridges the gap between preschool and traditional kindergarten. I had worked with kids before and always liked them, but never wanted to work in education. I love what educators stand for, but I couldn’t stand the way entitled students treated them, so that’s why it was always a no for me. Though the pay was good (for the time and compared to what I was making) and was a good challenge for me, the important part was that I didn’t sway from my plan. This new job would be temporary  until I landed my dream job. 

TK was fiesta

My coworkers were great, and I had a solid schedule where I didn’t have to battle for extra hours or pick up an extra shift. Until the unexpected happened. The teacher I was working with quit one month after school started. The school was a dual immersion classroom where a majority of the curriculum was in Spanish, and the school would hire substitute teachers who rarely (read couldn’t) speak it. My dad is a Spanish speaker. Focused and dedicated, I unintentionally stepped into the role of the main teacher. I didn’t get compensated for it, I was doing it because I hate chaos. Hence my strict plan. 

Having that little teacher moment for about three weeks made me evaluate my career choice. Though being a writer and working at a publishing company had been my goal, it started to feel like a distant dream that had to switch to a practical scheme. I never wanted to be a teacher nor work in education, but it came to me when the opportunity presented itself. I started taking steps to get into the residency program the school was partnered with. While that was happening in my head, I had issues with the teacher they hired to cover the class. It was mainly a petty drama I didn’t want to take a part of, but I got dragged into the mess. The havoc delayed my plan. 

I didn’t get into the residency program for not passing an exam on time. I felt defeated because I was ready for that challenge, ready for something new (or so I thought). However, they did offer me a 2nd grade teaching position at another campus under an emergency credential while I got my exams in order. It felt like my second chance to get things right and not fall behind. It was a fresh start: new grade, new campus, new boss, a new challenge and a step closer to checking something off my list. 

This is where EVERYTHING started going wrong

My first year of teaching sent me down a deep spiral of dark emotions. I had a very high-needs class with little support, and one student was very disruptive and aggressive with peers. I woke up every morning with a dread of not wanting to go to work. I cried myself to sleep, and Sundays would bring panic attacks because I didn’t want Mondays. 

I was on edge. Every. Single. Workday.  Countless urgent care visits for a stress rash, dehydration, or some other health complication. Somatizing had never happened to me before, the feeling of being “bad” at something and expressing it in my body. No matter how much I tried, no progress. Trapped for the first time. 

Frustration caused me to fall into a major reevaluation of my mapped-out life. Where did I go wrong? What step did I forget to do? Why aren’t I finding all the answers to my questions? In the midst of all this, I did get married to my best friend. Amazing, but how quickly life reminds you that you are quite in control. 

I got pregnant while teaching the spring semester of 2nd grade. Over-the-moon ecstatic, nervous, scared, everything that expectant moms are feeling. Bad class behaviors climbed to a high-rise, and with no support and no help, I was on my own. That stress of having 24 kids, plus one that your body is trying to complete, relying on you to keep them safe in their budding environment was a lot for my body to carry… It turned out to be too much by one. 

I was never the same after that interruption. I did finish the school year, but put in my resignation letter. I was unemployed all summer. I constantly thought about where I went wrong. Why did my life map not come true? Why am I unemployed when I completed my degree just like counselors told me to do? How did I manage to mess up so badly? Am I a loser for quitting? I am a complete failure. 

I would see people my age on social media having the time of their lives with everything they dreamed of: good work, fancy vacations, kids, hanging out with big groups. What did I get? Depression. Anxiety because I am nowhere near where I was supposed to be. I’m not even on the same level as my peers, maybe adulting is something I would never get to, my biggest failure.

At the time it felt like a slap in the face, but I got what many people don’t get, a do-over. I got a chance to revisit my high expectations and reframe the list, fix it, and not think about it so much. 

I had it all planned out

Instead I got to focus on why I made that list in the first place, and it was because I wanted control. We can map out our whole lives in detail, to the most specific thing, and life will remind us that not everything goes the way we planned it. Facing what I could control and what I couldn’t. That demon.

I can guide but not guarantee what happens today, tomorrow, nor the next hour, but if you put life on pause, you can pick up where you left off. I am playing a wonderful game of Life; the mission is to enjoy it and fill it with experiences rather than following a straight, narrow, boring path or plan. 

Like a game there’s sidequests, rewards, and bonus opportunities but there’s also troubles, obstacles, and villains who will try to prevent you from succeeding. I may “lose” the battle with a minor derailment but I get to try again.  I spent my whole life following a plan, I forgot how to experience anything. Remember that writer dream I had to put on pause? 

Writing is my expression of experience; because I wasn’t experiencing anything, there was nothing new to write about. I got to continue experiencing life again before being kicked out of the server for idling. I would rather keep trying to finish the game, trying my best and working hard, than quitting without even trying and never getting that extra life.  

I am still fighting through the chaos of it all every day, but I am taking one moment at a time, and I know that I can still make my dreams into reality with hard work, steadiness, gratitude, determination, and luck. I can adjust and detach. 

For me, the overly controlling life stemmed  from being too attached to a fixed vision, which came back to bite me in the plans. Attached and failing, and I’m crushed. For me, more dispassion meant less depression as it meant I was granting myself more compassion to be me and to adjust. 

A lesson I’m still working on. For me,