sorry for the ages of absence. no excuse, just a busy happy summer.

thought I'd throw this out there: Utne had a short but curious article about this "quarterlife crisis" phenomenon -- the thing, they say, that is replacing the midlife crisis in American Culture. we know it. we live it. it's the decade after college that leaves us unstable, insecure, and very very lonely. not ready for a (I mean, "the") career yet, too old to imitate Britney Spears in word or deed and/or get trashed every night. we most likely live about 300 miles from home and at least that far away from every childhood to college friend we know. our relationships are electronic and telephonic, and acquaintances far outnumber friends (do we even have a real friend in the city we live in?).

if you wanna hear a bunch of people complain about the situation, go to http://www.quarterlifecrisis.com. it wasn't very exciting reading (they could call it www.lonelyanddepressed.com), but the idea of a quarterlife crisis smacks of verity. no one I know in their twenties feels settled or if they are settled are entirely comfortable with it. almost no one I know lives near home or even feels like they are living somewhere they want to plant roots. and they're all pretty much freaked out about the whole thing.

then again, it may just be that every new personal decade brings a certain amount of strife, a thing we can call crisis if we'd like. it may just so happen that the voice of the twenties is a little louder than the voice of the more settled, employed, and possibly even parental thirties. maybe we don't have anything better to do than bitch.

what do you think? is it something else to be in your twenties now than it was 20 years ago? and is that enough for us to coin our own crisis? or should we just buckle down keep our nose to the ground and get on with the damn thing?