After the Quarter-Life Crisis, What’s Next?

Haven’t blogged in a while. The pandemic, Coronavirus, has affected our social life. The patterns of how we interact with friends have changed, making conversation and interaction a hard part. Perhaps it’s a time for people to stop and think, spend their me-time, in this 2020, to think about how to progress further?

Back to the main topic — After the quarter-life crisis, what’s next?

Honestly, I don’t really like the term “quarter-life crisis” and feel that my life at this age of 25 has nothing to do with the “quarter-life crisis”. The reason why I am raising this is simply that there was one time my friend mentioned this when she just got to the age of 25, then I started to realize there’s a term describing this phase of life. Here comes the law of attraction — if you think it is, it is; if you think it’s not. it’s not. Simple rules guiding our life, we cannot be manipulated by such thoughts. I am writing this to give myself a good wrap-up to my 25 before turning to 26 in a week after.

For me, my 25 have been a challenging yet meaningful age. I kick-started my first day of 25 after a meaningful work trip to Quy Nhon, Vietnam in March with my best working buddy, strong shooting crew, and a sociable celebrity (not the best but at least an easy-going one). That’s an amazing experience. After that, I started working on several carnival events, thinking of initiatives for fundraising in my previous job, well, something new to think of but it’s not something new to learn. Then I changed my job, met some new friends, devoted a lot to brainstorming new ideas and finding my worth at this new scope of work. Let’s make some bullet-points on what I’ve achieved/done at age of 25 in the quarter-life crisis stage as I’ve never been an organized thinker:

• Striving for excellence: Reached the campaign fundraising targets for my specific KPI in the middle of the year, the campaign I managed was one of the biggest campaigns of the company — yes, that’s related to my first ever PR-related work trip as mentioned earlier. I was expecting a promotion in mid-year but somehow I got disappointment due to some organization politics — bitch gossiping around, a different political stance at work that caused some misunderstanding/miscommunication with my mentor/boss — ended up I wanted to demonstrate my devotion out of all those wrong perceptions so I worked really hard to prove something — I’m confident to tell I’ve been the best employee there due to my passion and devotion — I made insightful content sharing and brought in new solutions that would drive our NGO further. That’s what I’d been doing before I left that NGO.
• I’ve been a lucky girl: Successfully held the Mongolia field trip in August — that’s a roller-coaster experience that I would never forget. People went on strike on the day and the day before I had to take the flight with 18 donors. I got to plan and thought of a contingency plan just in case there’s a flight cancellation or delay, thought of every scenario so that I could prepare for my communications with my donors. I was panic but had to keep calm in front of my donors and colleagues who relied on me on every single decision since I’m the only one with so much traveling experience. Thank God we ended up just delaying a bit with the support from my Mongolian colleagues, shouting out to Uno, Tunek, and Chimgee, because at any time it could be canceled due to the social movement, but it’s just damn fortunate with all those support and luck. (every trip has its roller-coaster situation and perhaps next time I should write a blog post relating to that)
• Become more aware of what’s happening in HK: I guess that’s the same to every single HK, not just me, because of the extradition law crisis, the HK government sucks. We all know it and I started some controversial conversation with friends with different stance, how dare me explaining a lot to them. Never thought I would do this. Joined social movements and elections to fulfill my civil responsibilities and roles.
• Did something related to education: I went back to my secondary school to hold some activity-based learning games — mentioned this in my 2019 wrap-up so I’m not going to talk much here.
• Changed my job: This was always my goal of 2019 or for my 25 as I had been working for my past employer for more than 3 years. If I’m still sitting, waiting for the damn promotion doing nothing, I know I’m gonna spend my life staying in my comfort zone. Honestly, leaving my past job as hard as it’s truly my best experience… I loved my workplace, colleagues, the purpose and meaning of work, it’s like the perfect job in life. But I knew I had to do this. Then I started my job hunting in May, the first time in those three years, I started writing my CV, uploading to job-hunting apps, sending it to headhunters, looking for the right job. I’m lucky that I’ve got four great companies approaching me — big and small ones, but all are those fields that I would like to tap into. I ended up resigning after getting my first offer in a small start-up that works for talent recruitment for tech companies, it’s true that I really like their rationale as I was one of their students studying UX/UI (keep learning is the point). It offered me an appealing job position and salary package. Another one was a social enterprise — I passed all interviews but ended up not even thinking about it because that’s one company that matched every criterion I set — a well-known company, travel, global scale, start-up — well that’s the company that I’m working with now.
• Got promoted in 6 months: Again, how fortunate I was. With a good supervisor, she’s my good friend now as well, good colleagues who like messing around with me. Our boss isn’t that unbearable and holds faith in me. Honestly, I did think of quitting due to the unbalance of work and life, the dislike of routine work, I even started planning my year of 2020 for job hunting/career jump. But with the current situation (COVID-19), I guess not making any move is the best move — telling my ex-boss about this idea too. I am so fortunate in such a hard time I still got to promote, got to earn money and bonus, got to do and try something new at work. Let’s keep going and see what’s happening next. Be more devoted and take more ownership with such reward and encouragement. Cheers!

I’ve been a super lucky girl in 25, the Mongolia trip, the recognition from my past employer (tho it’s not at the right timing), the promotion received currently were the proofs, learned a lot from past experiences, telling people I am mature enough to make a decision. I had gone through a lot since the trip to Ethiopia in 2018. I am always the kind of person who likes to reminisce the part, very nostalgic, well perhaps this is a bad habit too. So I’m gonna based on all these achievements, what I’ve done well, do bad, then improve it at age of 26 — life is too short, you just can’t waste any single bit of life, but sometimes taking a break like what we are doing now staying at home is necessary.

Here are some resolutions for my age of 26 after the quarter-life crisis (6 days later, I’m turning 26, to me, I’m still young as hell, keep this young mind moving):

• Stop overthinking, stop overreacting — recently I’ve been overthinking a lot. Building up a romantic relationship with someone has always been an issue to me, I couldn’t get to someone that close as I would have uncontrollable thoughts in mind that would drain me off. Focus on the me-time.
• Keep learning new things — with the recognition at work, I need to take up more responsibilities, “the greater the authority, the greater the responsibility”, I think I need to ignite my passion in this field and role. Start loving what I am doing more. Plan ahead of what can make me excel. Should I learn more about GA, about Performance Marketing? That’s the work part. What about the life part? Should I learn new sports/languages/interest? Or maybe get another license in something else? (Got the rock climbing license last year)
• Work/Study abroad — Perhaps I need to set a timeline for this part. This has always been in my mind… Recently I saw an appealing job ad — hell, that’s my first time in life feeling there’s something that I really want that makes me hard to breathe… I am not joking, I really want it — the only thing that has held me back is simply because of the virus situation that makes me hard to travel around now and we can’t even foresee when will it end. That’s damn sad. Perhaps this should be like by the end of my 26’s goal? (originally thought it could be June/July — but now perhaps start planning in June for the next March?)
• Get my shit together — As said I am so unorganized… no matter my thoughts, how I express, how I act, like everything… I am damn unorganized… stuff cluttering around the house… haven’t done any photo back-up since last April… my wardrobe is like hell, filled with so many clothes that I am not wearing.

So what’s next after the quarter-life crisis?

• Blog more — on different topics, on thoughts
• Drive more — practice my driving skill, prepare for my next road trip, drive like a cool dude
• Keep fit — do exercise (squash is a good choice) & diet control

See you next time!

(archive from my old blog dated on March 22, 2020)

• PosCreActive – Positive, Creative, Active
• “Break Me Down and Build Me Up”
• Master the New Skill: DGAF