The Quarter-Life Crisis, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Failure

The plan is coming along nicely.

We've identified the city (check), come up with a business plan (sort of) and started tucking away savings (erm...yeah. I am putting that shoe fetish on hold, as of next week. Promise). We've sorted a date to leave our London flat. In February we're moving in with my mum for 6-8 weeks while we squirrel away our rent money. (Eeep.)

All that remains is to get driving (ok, so that's a fairly large undertaking, but my 19 year old cousin has  already beat me to the wheel in Wood Green, so I should bloody well be able to apply myself). It's getting embarassing. My US family members already think I'm some kind of idiot-savant who just about manages to hold down a job and feed myself without being able to drive to Walgreens. Not that we have a Walgreens to drive to. But you get my meaning.

Oddly enough, even with all this change coming, there's a strange feeling of calm about my future washing over me. Even though I have absolutely no idea what the next year will hold, I feel like I'm really working towards something. And even if it turns out to not be a sustainable business, at least I will have tried something independent, and been my own boss. It's not quite 'do what you love', because, as this very clever lady rightly says, what we love changes all the time. So I'm taking what I consider to be some very good advice and doing what I am. What I am is someone who needs a challenge. Someone who has always wanted to be fluent in another language, and do something I feel passionate about. Passion is everything, after all.

I spent this Saturday at the Nordic Study Abroad Conference, as a speaker alongside some very learned professors from the Universities of Cambridge University, Brown, Georgetown, and Copenhagen. 250 young Danish, Swedish and Norwegian students assembled at PWC's Copenhagen offices to hear from those who had done something different, and were all the better for it. I was possibly the least senior person on the billing, with no letters after my name, no ivy-league degree under my belt, and a mere 6 years' experience of working in the field of international student recruitment. To tell you the truth, I was pretty petrified of putting on that little microphone headset and owning the stage in the way some of the more seasoned professors had. Many of the other speakers had been truly inspiring, and they had managed to captivate the audience in that way that only those who have inbuilt charisma, and a true passion for what they are speaking about, can.  But watching the talk preceding mine, from Professor Sudhanshu Rai at the Copenhagen Business School, I was impressed by some home truths in his speech, which was all about not being afraid to make mistakes, or "fail". I was struck in particular by one statement he made, which put the whole 'failure is not an option' culture into a new light. He simply told the audience of very high-achieving, driven students that when we succeed, we experience a state of euphoria, but that when we fail, we experience a state of reflection. It's therefore only with reflection, and true consideration, that real successes are born.

Hearing that actually helped me to make a better presentation (I suppose the pressure of failure was lessened a bit!). I spent the rest of the conference being pretty inspired just being able to speak to these young people, who had such big plans in their sights. I'm not much older than many of them, and they were so committed, so eager to do something memorable, to chase their dreams that it made me stop for a minute to consider why I'm feeling something very similar now. I might be a little late to the party, but I've realised that we all need to do something that scares and exhilarates us once in our lives. 

A tiny me, onstage (bricking it).

I guess now that I'm not as scared of getting up and presenting alongside the great and the good, in front of an audience who will achieve more in their 20s than many of us will in our entire lives, I'm on the right road. There's still loads that I am scared of: getting a phrase completely wrong in my fledgling new language; running out of money; having to live at my mum's again for a few weeks, or months. I'm scared that I might really miss the security of an office job. I might miss London terribly. And I think I still have a lot to learn, even from those 18, 19 and 20 year-olds who haven't figured it all out yet. And basically I think, if I were younger, I'd run at the opportunity to gain new experiences and try out something new.  I'm not getting any younger, so today is the youngest I'll ever be. So I'm going to bloody well do something cool before I'm old.

Maybe it's a bona-fide quarterlife crisis. But hell, I'm enjoying it.

Growing Up

Ma & Pa getting hitched in NYC, 1975. How cool is that hat?!

I've been thinking a lot about getting older recently.

Being at my mum's house a few weekends ago and seeing some old photos of her and my dad has got me thinking a lot about my roots. Mum was excited at having found old photos, mainly because we lost so many precious ones to the swirling, destructive winds of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. She showed me photos of my parents at my age. At my age, my mother had already done two huge life moves, from London to Trinidad and then to Miami. I wondered at her bravery, and at her ability to adapt.

As I get older, and hurtle towards my 30th birthday in August, I'm finding that I feel rather reflective. I start to notice my face changing - the smile lines are just a little bit more pronounced around my eyes, and I can see my skin is changing. New freckles I hadn't noticed before begin to appear. But I'm trying not to indulge in too much gazing in the mirror, and it doesn't consume as much of my time as it did in my early 20s, that's for sure. A cursory once-over is enough in the mornings, mostly to make sure I haven't got toothpaste all over my chin. No, the days of high-preening are probably behind me now.

I challenge anyone to spot any wrinkles from here...

I have started to notice a common theme amongst friends and colleagues who are all approaching this pivotal age - they are all planning to change their lives somehow, whether it's new house, new job, new partner, new baby, or new business. 30, unlike 18 or 21, or even 25, is the beginning of real adulthood, it feels like. We all have some urgency to our plans now. For some of my female friends, this is even more true, especially where relationships are concerned. Two out of four of my closest female friends are now married and thinking very closely about having children. The other two are well into their 30s and seem much less panicked about making babies. They know it will come. They've gotten over the hump, as it were.

For me, it's only when I have time to sit down and think that I start to make some headway towards deciding what the heck it is that I want. Most of the time, working a full-time job in London feels like playing continual catch-up: with your friends, with your work, with your life admin, with your laundry, with sleeping. It's only by being away from the melée that I start to commit myself to the next thing I want to do. And on holiday a couple of weeks ago, I decided. We decided. We're going to start a small business and rent rooms to weary city-travellers, and put our combined skills of being good hosts (or so we are told), creative marketers and being people-people to use. We need to do bags more research of course, not to mention finalise the city in question, as well as create a business plan, and save up lots of our hard-earned money, but the wheels are in motion - we plan to leave London in March 2013.

It's basically beans on toast from here on in for a while, but I feel so very empowered. A new sense of freedom and the scent of adventure in the distance has completely motivated me. Learning a new language will be part of it, but the ability to work together towards a common goal, in a new place, for our own profit (or possibly loss, in the first few months, I'm not going to shy away from being realistic here) is driving me forward towards the biggest and most frightening, exhilarating step towards adulthood that I have ever taken.

I think that's a good place to be, aged 29 years, 10 months, and 5 days.

Escape

This time two weeks ago, I was waking up on a sunny morning in Bordeaux, looking for the first café au lait of the day. The Mister was across the road, buying pains au chocolat, and we were looking at one another sadly, for it was the day we were due to fly back to London.

We had three hours to kill before it was time to get on the airport bus; that most depressing of transport types. We had already walked most of the length and breadth of the city but we knew it was important to keep moving and not think too much about the holiday taking its last gasps of air, and light, before being consigned to a dusty suitcase of memories.

We walked around until lunchtime, as the students at the University streamed out of classrooms and onto sunny squares, as office workers took cigarette breaks and murmured covertly over cups of coffee, and as more new tourists streamed into the city, gaping up at the magnificent sea-horses at Girondins, and snapping the circus big top pitched at the Esplanade des Quinconces. We met a sweet German couple in their seventies who asked us to take their photo with their old 35mm camera. They beamed for the picture like two lovesick schoolchildren. The Garonne glistened and beckoned as children played in the fountains at the Miroir d'eau.  I took a breath, on the tram back to the Gare St Jean, and held it, sitting very still, while I listened to that little voice inside, which said, why not stay?

Collecting our bags from the hotel, we had a minor argument, about something trivial, like luggage tags, or whose bag held the dirty laundry. It was only because we were both sad, and we had nothing to be angry with Bordeaux about. It was like it was something to do whilst waiting for the airport bus, because it was better than thinking about what we were doing; leaving this beautiful place which had enchanted us and made us want to stay and do anything just to have a little dog and live in an apartment with a balcony and raise French-speaking children.

We put our things underneath the bus and they got pushed to the back, as they always do. A family of South Africans sat near to us and talked very loudly about their cars and houses, their tannned blondeness and plentiful gold watchery seeming out of place on an airport bus. As we passed the Grand Theatre, and then the Piscine Judaïque, and finally the international school,  I cried a little. I turned my head away to the window, so no-one would see, and I made a promise to myself.

One day, little voice. One day soon, I will.

The Bitter Sweat City

Image credit tompagenet via flickr

Wow.

It's been 17 months since I started writing this blog. Give or take. And I have to confess, I feel like a bit of a fraud these days. I mean, take the title. London held so much for me back then, and it always will, but now it holds memories, not promises. I waited a long time to find what I was looking for in London, then I found it. I found him, more precisely. And now, every day I'm here feels like I need to start looking for somewhere else.

I've only been home for five minutes and it's 6.45pm. I finish work at 5.30pm, if I leave on time, which is rare at the moment, and it's taken me over an hour. That kind of daily commute wears you down after a while. Just getting onto the bus today, I took a couple of elbow jabs in my ribs, but nothing terrifying; it's just the average midweek homeward rush excitement that everyone who takes the 59 from Waterloo to Streatham seems to get.

On the bus there are shrieking children, crying babies in enormous prams, a host of not-too-personal stereos, and people sitting at the back of the bottom deck who frankly could do with investing in much more rigorous hygiene protocols. The bus driver is pissed off with us, with the traffic, with the weather - heavy tropicalian downpours one minute, sunshine reflecting off chrome bumpers the next. The air is dirty and heavy and all too still on the bus, as we all fight for elbow room for the Evening Standard, which every now and again gets rustled, irritatedly, by my travelling neighbour.

Increasingly I feel this beautiful, dynamic, crazy city is wearing me out. Maybe I am just prone to feeling more tired more often these days. Maybe I'm showing my age. Maybe it's just the first full week back at work in about a month and I'm feeling sorry for myself.

But the drive to move, to see, to go, is pulling at me, hard. The urge to take a leap, break free, do something worthwhile, and all those other clichés, is stronger than ever.

Luckily the man in my life is feeling the same way. It's a good thing I don't have to convince him about any kind of adventure. He was born ready. "Let's go and work in Africa", he says. "Let's run a bed and breakfast. Let's do a road trip across America. Let's run a jam farm."

Any or all of these options are attractive (especially the jam. Yum.) But the need to do something productive, from which I can gain tangible results, is important to me too. So we get to thinking about VSO. Something, somewhere at the back of my memory, reminds me that a maths teacher of mine once did a stint in Eritrea for VSO. Facebook comes into its own. BAM. I've fired off a friend request and an email faster than you can say 'opportunist'.

Mr B, let's call him, after 17 years or so, remembers me well. I'm tickled. But I'm much more interested in what he has to say about his volunteer experiences. He says it was the two best years of his life. He also says it was bloody hard work, and could be very isolating at times. He is keen to stress that the organisation might be very different now to when he was a part of it, but that they were looking for people who fit their mould, who shared the values and ambitions of the project. That they were matching people to roles, not the other way around, and that there were a number of hoops that he had to jump through in order to even get onto their books, as it were. The process from initial enquiry to beginning his posting was one year.

So I figure the end of next summer can be our own timetable for action. Maybe in another 17 months, this blog will have ceased to be what it originally was. Maybe I'll have to change its name, or start a new one. Whatever happens, you'll read about it here first.