Quarter-Life Crisis

It's that time of the year again where the blues crop up and sometimes, even the strange thoughts that keep me very much awake at 3 a.m. (Is this really just once a year because I've been having them on and off for the past year? Hmm, interesting..) In less than two months, I'll be 25. I know, mababaw, to be terrified when I haven't even hit my 40s, even the 30s. This could be a pressure from seeing a lot of peers my age seeming to know what they want out of life and working their way towards it. Or probably having a ton of friends getting married, giving birth, celebrating their anniversaries with their better halves? I'm not sure. But what I'm certain about is this feeling of panic, like I'm tied to a chair to watch the sun go up and down everyday and do nothing about anything. Even in the mornings, I feel like I wouldn't be able to accomplish something worthy for the whole day. Depression? I don't think so. The past year has been such an emotional roller coaster for everything to come down to a bad case of the blues.

I've been trying to step back and look at the whole situation to see where I made the wrong turn. And for the life of me, I don't know where to look. Why am I in this situation? Didn't I really have any choice back then? Even before I started working, I already know that I have big shoes to fill. While everyone is biding their time waiting for their preferred jobs, I started diving into a mind-numbing work that stops the creative thought processes. The only important thing there is that it paid the bills, it put food in the table, never mind the fact that I was burning my stomach lining from pretending for it to be something bigger than it really is. I moved on, spent another 3 years and counting in doing something that I thought is a step up from the past one which in turn, brought me here in this foreign city and I now realize that this is what I've been trying to avoid my whole life.

Would things have been different if I waited and pursued a less mundane life? Unfortunately, I didn't have that privilege, the waiting, because there are people waiting for me to provide a living. Don't get me wrong, I love my family and I've been doing whatever I can to make sure that we have a half-decent life. This is also where the problem lies. I fuck up and they go down with me.

I want to just take that leap, start fresh, consequences be damned but I love my family too much to mess up. Being locked up in this soap box is getting old. I desperately need to reinvent myself or at least focus on another thing that would make me... better. And contrary to what people around me are suggesting, it's not the addition of a romantic angle. I don't need to add another complication and burden him with my emotional excesses.

So now, what to do? A big chunk is to probably look back and rediscover what it is that I enjoy doing and am passionate about. After channeling my energy into doing whatever it is, I'm positive that everything else will follow. Come to think of it, being happy boils down to enjoying what you're doing with your time, earning a living out of it is just icing on the cake.

The funny thing is, I don't know if everything I just wrote made a lick of sense.

I'm dead scared and worried. Is what I'm planning to do, the right step?