How To Properly Have A Quarter-Life Crisis

Have you heard?

The latest trend this season is the quarter-life crisis. Not only are all the cool kids at your nearest University having them, we’re even seeing signs of crises among the hottest celebs. Justin Bieber, the notorious Hollywood bad boy, is clearly struggling with his own identity at the moment, and we can’t forget Amanda Bynes’s struggles from not too long ago.

But a quarter-life crisis is more than just an accessory. It is the lifestyle on which you base your wardrobe around. If you’re going to have a quarter-life crisis, you have to do it right. You can’t half-ass something like this. I’m going to need to see some serious perseverance from you. I’m going to need to see you take it in the proper stages and I’m going to need to see you commit.

Stage 1

1. Proclaim you are Neo and you can’t help but feel like there is something wrong in the world.
2. Change your major to philosophy.
3. Change back to business because you’re one semester away from graduation, idiot.
4. Take a class on the meaning of life.
5. Take a class on the psychology of happiness.
6. Proclaim you know everything about the human brain and walk around spewing your own thoughts to anybody who will listen.
7. Graduate

Stage 2

1. Get a job in an office.
2. Clench your throat in agony every second you spend in the office because you feel like you are being suffocated.
3. Take to drinking every night.
4. Watch nothing but social justice documentaries.
5. Drape the windows with sheets to block out any sunlight.
6. Proclaim to the world that life is meaningless and we all live in the matrix.
7. Wear the same t-shirt and sweatpants everyday for a week.

Stage 3

1. Do your taxes.
2. Make your first college loan payment.
3. Drown your sorrows in whiskey.
4. Have a nervous breakdown resulting in your best friend picking you up off the bathroom floor.
5. Cry together about how hard it is figuring out this thing called life.
6. Call your parents to ask for money.
7. Hang up the phone after the first ring, because you got this.

Stage 4

1. Balance your checkbook.
2. Make other “adult” friends.
3. Go to a wine tasting.
4. Impress your boss with a super neat idea.
5. Stay in thirteen Friday nights in a row because going out is very tiring and Forrest Gump is on again and you never get to see the ending because you always fall asleep.
6. Realize you don’t enjoy going out anymore.
7. Come to the conclusion that you might be getting old.

Stage 5

1. Cry and drink wine.
2. Yell at these darn kids for running around on your lawn.
3. Ponder if getting old is really the end of the world.
4. Come to the conclusion that it probably is better than the alternative.
5. Let your tears flow deeper than the Mississippi river.
6. Build a bridge across said river.
7. Get over it.

At least until the next existential crisis comes along!

[Featured Image Credit: Thoughtcatalog.com]