Late-20's crisis

We've all heard of mid-life crises, but what about late-20's crises?  A few years ago I ran across an article regarding people in their 20's having crises and it had the professionals rather stumped.  They couldn't figure out why younger generations were having breakdowns.  Think about it people!  A person without a college degree is limited in what jobs they can be hired to do, so families put extraordinary pressure on kids & teens to do well academically in order to get into a good college and win scholarships.  Have you seen the stress levels kids have to put up with these days?  My sister was only 10 when she developed her first ulcer.  I was 12 when I had my first one.  Adults blow off the pressure that this society puts on kids, but it's nothing to discount.  We demand excellence from them both academically and socially, asking them to join a variety of clubs, sports, etc to make them "stand out from the pack".  Once in college, we guide them into careers based on job demands in the workplace, rather than the best match for the individual.  We ask that they use adult reasoning to determine right from wrong and to avoid the traps of drugs, booze and sexually transmitted diseases.  We demand that they interact with the world where anorexic models are the epitome of perfection and our entire country is still dealing with the effects of realizing we are not safe anywhere.  We live in a society where we preach peace and nonviolence yet go to war justified by a rumor and what-if's.  We criticize other leaders for not trying harder to stop terrorism and yet we essentially abandoned our search for Bin Laden, leaving him to plan more attacks.  All of this can be summarized into this:  We force kids to not be kids at an earlier age every year.  We have, in effect, advanced the timing of having life-crises. 

 

I know I felt lost in college.  I pursued a career path that I truly enjoyed, but it isn't possible to make a living in that career without obtaining a Ph.D. and entering the cut-throat world of academia.  I don't want to be in a career where I have to be worried that I won't make tenure and/or lose my job simply because I didn't get enough research publications accepted by journals in a given year.  In a career like that, you are married to your job, and family takes a backseat.  What kind of life is that?  After college, I took a position I knew I could do with the thought of using that time to reevaluate my life, but I was in a tailspin.  It was the first time in nearly 20 years of schooling that I didn't have to think about homework or cramming knowledge into my head in order to prepare for an exam.  It was very liberating.  So, I lost track of time but always intended to get back on a career path.  I think I'm cursed by Murphy as the best of my intentions often go awry.  It's been five years since I graduated and I am still here, continuing to have the intentions to leave this dead-end job and get back on a career path.  Now my greatest obstacle is to decide which direction I want to go.  I know I have both job skills and personal traits that will make it easy for me to adjust to almost any position, but I'm tied down by obligations and my own conscientiousness.  I don't feel like I can leave my current office in the place it's currently in.  I feel like I need to create manuals of how to do the most ordinary tasks because people have relied on me to do them for so long that they'll be lost if I don't have something else in place.  I feel like the center of a storm most times.  But all of this is an excuse.  Even if I were to get the manuals done tomorrow, I would still be here.  Without knowing a destination, how can I leave the origin?  It's a puzzle that I chew on quite a bit.  If only I had a guardian spirit (like my fabulous friend Becky apparently does) to guide me in the right direction.