At a dive bar last Thursday, I sat at a faux wooden table with a handful of college friends. Like easily-swayed children, we had been tempted by a wine bottle with “notes of chocolate” listed on the label, an overpriced red blend which we sophisticatedly paired with macaroni and cheese. Remembering the goals we had set for ourselves during our college days not too long ago, it was pretty clear that by external measures, we had “made it”: among the group was a medical student, a management consultant, and a tech hardware entrepreneur with sales pouring in for her product.
Fueled by wine and mildly stressful rock-remixed Christmas music blasting over the speakers, we were reflecting on the year and how we honestly felt about life. We acknowledged the good, like the perks of expense accounts, the excitement of learning through our jobs, or the rush of raising money with investors.
But the core of our conversation maintained a despondent tone. The friend who is a big-three strategy consultant was fed up with political battles among her firm’s partners and 11 PM fire drills for meetings. The medical student knew that becoming a doctor was the dream, but each day felt monotonous: predictable hours of studying and grinding through weekly exams made the goal seem far away. Even the entrepreneur recounted that the freedom and excitement of being one’s own boss is outweighed by the heaviest form of career accountability. She was plotting “escape paths” — no doubt, we all were.
In spite of our vastly different lifestyles and goals, trying to do the best we can, we appeared to share a peculiar end-of-the-year feeling: an unshakable, searing sensation that we almost declared simultaneously out loud…
“I Just Feel Stuck.”
This unshakable 20-something stuck-ness has been the central feature of almost every catch up conversation I’ve had over the past few weeks, whether with a middle school friend in between startup jobs as a barista in our Jersey hometown, a high school friend torn up about whether or not to leave a professional services job she loves in New York City, a state department project manager deciding whether or not to take a private sector path, or a software engineer who recently made a cross-country move while furiously seeking the next big milestone.
Conversation after conversation, it has become more and more clear: those among us with flashy Instagram accounts, perfectly manufactured LinkedIn profiles, and confident exteriors (yours truly) are probably those who are feeling the most confused, anxious, and stuck when it comes to the future. The millennial 20-something stuck-ness sensation is everywhere, and there is a direct correlation between those who feel it and those who put off a vibe of feeling extremely secure.
It’s a confusing meta feeling, this American millennial sensation of stuck-ness. On the one hand, those of us who have been fortunate have grown up with extreme abundance never before seen in the history of humankind. We’re an ambitious generation fueled by the possibility of globalization, technology, and — for better or worse — the self-esteem parenting movement. We’ve been told our whole lives that we can achieve whatever it is we want in this post-modern world. Ours is a world theoretically free of the shackles of identity which may have once assigned societal duties aligned to one’s gender, race, sexual preferences, societal expectations, or history. We can “finally” be who we want to be.
On the other hand, I believe that this ability to craft one’s identity in society is exactly what’s led to the stuckness-sensation-anxiety felt among my generation. If this anxiety isn’t present in someone’s career life, it’s there in their dating life, or family life, or something else in their life. It’s as if the solution to these woes is just around the corner, after the next email, the next decision, the next year, like maybe in 2017. But it never comes, leaving us feeling stuck and questioning everything. The measuring stick upon which one can measure one’s life is an exhausting five dimensional roller coaster of options and preferences. As a result, the stuckness is bound to happen somewhere, sometime for a 20-something millennial. We’re never “set” — although maybe in a prior generation, we may have been.
As an example, if I had been born decades earlier — or even if I were born in a different city or town — American society may actively expect for me as a 24 year old female to be married, maintaining a home with a kid (or three). If I followed this prescription, I’d be “set” and not have to wonder about the opportunity cost of a different life choice. But just as those of my lady peers who have already made the choice to be married with kids in today’s day and age, I have more or less made the choice to continue dating my boyfriend of four years as we both focus on building career capital. Compared to prior generations, we can make choices as to who we spend time with, what we focus on, and what career we pursue. And even within the realm of one’s career alone, the choices and permutations available are innumerable. The possibilities are endless, and in a perverse way, it sort of sucks.
In the face of this frontier of possibility, we don’t want to misstep; we don’t want to waste the opportunity to make ourselves into the best versions of ourselves. And frankly, that’s a lot of pressure.
I have noticed that while we all have different ways of dealing with this anxiety, it actually comes in one of two extreme flavors: chaos or clinging.
Those who are chaos-loving tend to push away “official” choices and obligations in favor of delightful distractions. Think of an adventure-ravenous world traveler without a core purpose, the alcohol-and-gourmet-food-addicted genius who can’t stop job hopping, or the friend making a lot of money at a young age who can’t seem to escape serial dating drama. (Personally, I know that I’m diving into chaos mode when I find myself seeking out sugar, pizza, and Chinese food, eating everything else in sight with zero regard for my normally strict healthy diet.)
Those who are clinging tend to be disciplined in various avenues of life, clinging to career paths, or relationships, or habits. Think of a career-confused freelancer in a year 3 of a perpetually crappy relationship, the miserable law student marching into a career they know they’d hate just to put off the “but what should I do with my life” question, or the ladder-climbing corporate soldier pushing away weekend passions so that they can focus on promotion. (My boyfriend is guilty of the clinging tendency — sorry dude — when he starts to schedule every hour of every day with detailed workouts, specific sleep routines, and exact commuting patterns in an attempt to nail down the ever-spinning world around him.)
I judgmentally just listed a bunch of archetypes, but frankly, everyone has a tendency of unconsciously resorting to one of these two modes when dealing with anxious stuckness. When I notice myself going into “cling mode” or “chaos mode”, I try to remember that both extremes of “trying to deal” are just temporary band aids on a problem. What’s the solution?
As I sat there commiserating with friends at that dive wine bar, it was pretty clear that in spite of the ways in which this year was or wasn’t what we had hoped for, we all felt better after a few hours of chatting together. I had new stories and ideas to roll around in my head during the ride home, and a lot to write about in active reflection and meditation.
Rather than engaging in chaos or clinging, genuine connection with yourself and others is a much more effective way of dealing with the strange unpredictability of life. Will it remove all of the bad feelings? No; but a lot of times, just having these avenues of honesty are enough to remind you that given the shortness of life, the real relationships we have with ourselves and others are the fuel of existence.
For those of you feeling a little stuck at the end of this whirlwind of a year, just know this: that sensation of stuckness is just you fiercely coming up against the five dimensional frontier of possibility and the maddening opportunity cost of post-modern choice. And by the way, there are So. Many. People. who feel this stuckness, not just you. Never before has humankind lived in a world as intricate, advanced, complicated, and crazy as the era we are blessed to live in now. And frankly, there’s no truly elegant way to comprehend that reality and our relation to it — hence why it’s so easy to feel small, stuck, and a little sad when it comes to trying to figure out your shit.
In this world, it’s even more important than ever to keep yourself connected and grounded through the help of those around you. Making time to connect with yourself, friends, loved ones, family, spirituality, religion, God, or other human beings in honest, wholehearted ways on a regular basis will keep reminding you of the reasons to be satisfied. While chaos distracts you from stuckness and clinging just keeps you stuck, frequent commitment to deep connection creates ropes and ladders that allow you to climb up and out of a rut.
By the way, that rut doesn’t go away — in the face of online posts like this one which muse about life and make the solution sound simple, one can forget that simple solutions are not always easy ones. Our post-modern time period is poised to a) distract the hell out of you and b) let you know all the reasons why you should feel anxious and stuck. The stuckness, the rut-inducing opportunity cost of decisions, the road of a million decisions to be made over the course of a lifetime — in some form of varying intensity regardless of the date on the calendar, optional pressure will always be there.
But so are at-will wine dates, unnecessarily long messages to family members, middle of the night phone calls, multi-year mentorship, friendship punctuated by inside jokes and emoticons, and laughably lofty, ambitious goals.
This year, and every year, your wholehearted, human connections will allow you to continuously reevaluate and refocus on the moving targets of modern life and remember the truth: these are what really matter.
Note: I originally wrote this a year ago (December 2016) on Medium, but it's a good time of year to review verbalized life epiphanies related to career like this one. Enjoy!