Giveaway: The In-Between

The-In-BetweenLast week I mentioned a few books that helped me process and understand my  quarter life crisis. (For the record, I still feel stupid every time I write that phrase.) Honestly, none of them were Book Saviour of my situation. Nothing I came across carried the epiphany that solved my broody inner conflict.

This book is also not that book. (Sorry.)

But, in a sense, the book is more than that. The whole premise of it is, as its subtitle says, embracing the tension between the now and the next big thing. It talks of the discipline of valuing the awkward in-between. Don’t worry, the book is not as painful as that sentence made it sound. Jeff shares how he has learned to find meaning and value in the times of waiting.

It’s something I’ve tried to get better at.

As I was reading this book, I thought, “this book would be good for people going through a quarter life crisis.” I also started wracking my brain of people who were in an in-between phase so I could recommend it to them.

And then I had a horrifying realization. I have been in the in-between state in certain areas of my life, too. It was better when I didn’t realize I was waiting and hoping for things. Now I feel like I’m in this purgatory and CAN’T GET OUT! Suddenly the book went from being something I wanted to pass on to someone who could benefit from it more, to something I was thinking about regularly, practicing often and ended up reading a second time.

The In-Between is a story of growth and change. The glimpses the author gives us could very well be from your life or mine. He’s adventurous and goal-oriented. But no matter how hard we work to get somewhere there are always times of waiting. How we respond to this waiting, Jeff says (and I totally agree), can say more about us than where we’re going.

Go leave a comment answer the question: What was your most recent ‘in-between’ moment or most difficult time of waiting? Then sign up for your copy of The In-Between by Jeff Goins! 

The giveaway runs today until August 30 (2 weeks). You can get more entries by tweeting and sharing on Facebook daily (come back and update Rafflecopter each time). The only mandatory entry is a blog comment. Rafflecopter now works on iDevices.

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My Quarter Life Crisis [Part 2]

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[Read Part I Here]

“With professional athletes drafted out of high school and A-list singer-actors in their teens, we’re made to feel that if we haven’t achieved something monumental by the age of twenty-five, then we’re already over the hill.”

“Some adults — usually those in a midlife crisis— roll their eyes when they hear ‘Quarterlife Crisis.’ ‘Twentysomethings can’t be in a crisis!’ they say. ‘When you have your youth and freedom, you have nothing to complain about.’

“I try turning the tables. ‘If that’s your reason for dismissing a Quarterlife Crisis,’ I reply, ‘then how can you complain about a midlife crisis when you have a spouse, a car, a savings account, and a backyard with a pool?’ They are not amused. The generation gap grows fierce.” – Alexandra Robbins, It’s A Wonderful Lie

It didn’t take me long in my reading to identify with what these twentysomethings were talking about, but when I spoke about it with other people I found myself being met with laughter, scoffing and general mockery, just like the above quotation. People didn’t understand. This only made me want to turn even more into myself. Learning that this was actually a very normal thing for people my age, even if I might be the only one of my group of friends going through it, I was comforted. Later, I was able to talk to another close friend who went through a similar experience, just a year-and-a-half after I had.

My biggest questions at the time were “Who am I? What makes me unique? Where am I going?” Four years ago I struggled to respond well to these questions because I seemed to have and want all the same things that my friends from University did. We all mostly worked in the same field, had the same values etc. We didn’t all have the same likes and dislikes, but that didn’t seem to mean much at the time. “Where am I going?” was the scariest question of all. I had no idea. I was unhappy with my work situation, but felt trapped there because of my student loans. I fantasized about moving to Montreal and working at Starbucks, but that wasn’t a better option. I didn’t really want what I had. What I really wanted to was to marry a confident, ambitious man with a stable job who would love me and impregnate me and let me stay at home with our kids. But that didn’t seem like the right thing for a University grad to want right out of University. I felt guilty for having a degree and wanting to not use it, especially when my mom’s biggest life regret was not getting a degree.

I felt like (and was?) the biggest ungrateful whining spoiled child ever, and still couldn’t change how I felt.

My friend Amanda

Maybe you can identify more with Amanda. Her crisis came a year and a half after mine.

Like me, she graduated from Queen’s University with a (similar) degree in Geography/Women’s Studies. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life (read: career) but knew she didn’t want to do her Masters and that would be the level of education she’d need in order to use her degree practically. She had a significant amount of student loan debt and knew she couldn’t go back home to live with her parents because it just wasn’t an environment conducive to growing up. I like to say I convinced her to move to Montreal, but I’m pretty sure she’s an adult and came to this conclusion on her own. She came to Montreal and stayed with some generous friends while she tried to find a job. After weeks of looking, she managed to get a job at Second Cup — far from her dream post-undergrad job. She started looking for a church while trying to figure out her way in a bilingual city, knowing no French.

She hated the question, “where do you work?” because she graduated from Queen’s, well known for grooming snobs (I can say that because I am one) and she resented the fact that she worked at a chain coffee shop. As she started spiralling down into her own quarter-life-crisis, having no plan for a career because she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. I tried to remind her of a few important things: she had her faith, friends, family (at a distance) and was working on paying off her debt. These are key things in growing up! But I knew, having been in her position, that this was probably not as encouraging as it should be.

Growing up is hard to do

It was an extremely uncomfortable time for us, especially doing it alone. We were letting things about our lives define us instead of who we were and who we were becoming. We didn’t know who we were becoming and we weren’t sure if we were going to like us!

Were we still the same person we were in High School even though we haven’t achieved any of the goals we thought we would by now? “Who am I without having achieved anything significant?” we wondered.

But four years later, I’m doing more than OK. So is Amanda. Our life isn’t turning out how we expected it to, but we’ve come to terms with that. It’s OK.

What’s the solution?

As I was chatting with Amanda about publishing this post we agreed on this: this time was essential in developing our character. We learned what hard, thankless work meant and that lesson is invaluable. We learned more about our own faith and the truth of where and who we were putting it in.

I wish I could say “just do X” or “believe Y” to make the difficulty of the Quarter Life Crisis go away. I can’t. There’s no magic answer. It’s simply an awkward second puberty that only happens to some people. We struggle awkwardly in growing up. It’s hard. We learn we can’t base our identity in circumstances that could change like marital status, career possibilities, even family. Crisis happens, even when we know it’s rooted in our entitlement and spoiled-ness, which makes it even more frustrating.

We become, and years later we are still becoming. This is both scary and hopeful.

My quarter life crisis , 4 years later. [Part 1]

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This summer marks the 4 year anniversary of my Quarter Life Crisis. I realized what was going on a year after I graduated University. I didn’t know what was happening to me I seemed to be the only one of my friends who was experiencing what I was. After some time on Google, I realized that I was probably having a quarter life crisis. I had never heard the term before. At the time, Wikipedia listed the following traits*:

  • realizing that the pursuits of one’s peers are useless
  • confronting their own mortality
  • watching time slowly take its toll on their parents, only to realize they are next
  • insecurity regarding the fact that their actions are meaningless
  • insecurity concerning ability to love themselves, let alone another person
  • insecurity regarding present accomplishments
  • re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
  • lack of friendships or romantic relationships, sexual frustration, and involuntary celibacy
  • disappointment with one’s job
  • nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
  • tendency to hold stronger opinions
  • boredom with social interactions
  • loss of closeness to high school and college friends
  • financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
  • loneliness, depression and suicidal tendencies
  • desire to have children
  • a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you
  • frustration with social skills

I didn’t identify with all of them, but I was feeling the loneliness and missing University, I had the burden of $30, 000 in school loans, I was painfully single, I wanted kids, I was feeling like a failure because the place I was in my job was not at all as planned, and I was facing the fact that the world was not my oyster like I had previously thought. It was like growing up in the Shire and then being ushered into downtown Toronto where the cold hard buildings block out the sun and people are barking at you to get out of their way. Or at least, that’s how it felt.

The real world didn’t seem very pleasant.

After looking up ‘quarter life crisis’ on Wikipedia, I thought about checking to see what kind of books there were on the topic. I found a book called 20 Something, 20 Everything that explained it even more to me. The author had experienced what I had. She done some research and found out that this was fairly normal, especially for young female college grads. Here are a few quotes from other young women who were describing this time in their life:

  • “All of a sudden I feel lots of pressure from society about what a woman should be.”
  • “I do not feel like a grown-up because I’m still learning about myself.”
  • “I immediately start pursuing what I think I want for a profession, then change my mind and start over. It is a time of dating, living with others, breaking up, and establishing independence from my family.”
  • “I feel conflicted, knowing I need to break away from the security of my parents but not knowing how to do it and, quite honestly, not really wanting to.”
  • “This is a time of much needed self-discovery and tough learning experiences.”
  • “Being independent for the first time is scary, dramatic, lonely, complicated, and harsh, yet at the same time, empowering, educational, and exciting.”
  • “This is a time where I want to figure out who I am, what I want, what my purpose is in life, but I seem to spend more time learning how much pressure I can handle.”
  • “I am still searching, trying to figure out what makes me tick and what my voice is in the world.”
  • “This is a time for everything at once, with a feeling like there is no room for error.”
  • “I experience misplaced energy from a weak sense of self. A lot of ‘two steps forward, three steps back.’”

I kept reading through this book and found so much comfort in the fact that I was one of many people who were going through this very same thing.  And then came the check-list that might confirm it for you as it did for me:

  1. Do you feel a need to “have it all”?
  2. Do you feel older for the first time in your life?
  3. Do you feel pressure to grow up and get your adult life in order?
  4. Do you often feel depressed, overwhelmed, lost and maybe even a little hopeless?
  5. Do you ever feel that time is running out when you try to figure out your career and decide whether you want to get married and/or have children?
  6. Are you stressed out by choices that seemingly will affect the rest of your life?
  7. Do you feel that you have failed because you don’t know what you want to do with your life?
  8. Do you over-analyze yourself and your decisions?
  9. Do you ever feel guilty for complaining about your life when you’ve lived only about a quarter of it?
  10. Are you embarrassed that you have not figured out or accomplished more?

Though I had said yes to all 10, I started to feel some hope. I was somewhat relieved to hear that other people did too. [To be continued…]

*The list is no longer there, but I kept a copy on my computer.

Another goal completed

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So I can now check off “publish ebook” from my list of things I wanted to do.

She’s out in the wild. I sent a scheduled email to go out yesterday while I was on vacation. Today the “My Ebook” tab appeared and the “Download Now” image to the right which is where you can go to get your copy. I’m surprised by how many of you have emailed me saying you’ve read it already! You sure know how to make a girl blush.

I’ve got another giveaway coming up soon. Another book. Yay!

What are you logging your 10,000 hours on?

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I’m on vacation this week and taking a break from the internets. These are scheduled posts. Forgive me for not responding in the comments until next week.

I finally pulled out Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers last Saturday and made my way through the first half of it. It’s definitely not a new book, but I still keep hearing about it and so I decided to pick it up.

If you’re unfamiliar with the book, he talks at length about how (generally speaking) 10,000 hours of practice will bring you near to being a master in the area of practice.

Although the 10,000 hour rule is getting some negative press lately (see here, here, and here) the general idea is still helpful. Here’s why:

  • It gives us a minimum goal (ie: a lot of work) to help us aim for
  • Helps us see what we’re maybe wasting our time on
  • Reminds us of our youth

Let me explain. As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but try to estimate how many hours I have spent writing.

1h, every day = 27.4 years
2h, every day = 13.6 years

Writing is obviously a hard one to  gauge. I can write so much faster and more efficiently than I could as a teenager. I counted hours spent blogging (12 years, people!), an undergrad degree in arts (lots of essays), and three novels. It’s definitely not a perfectly accurate number, but I think it’s close to 5,000 hours over 12 years.

You’re logging hours

Most of us are 20somethings, which means that most of us still have time to work really hard at something and become good. Sure, it would be more like a second career, where our “prime” is in our 40s, but people! this is still good news! It means we can still do cool things. If you’re anything like me, you have probably wondered if you’re going to make something of yourself, like, ever. If you haven’t “made it” already, then is it even still possible?

So what are you logging your hours on? Video games? The gym? A bunch of things, but nothing really seriously? Consider picking that one thing. Start logging hours.

Give up or Keep going?

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I’m on vacation this week and taking a break from the internets. These are scheduled posts. Forgive me for not responding in the comments until next week.

I think about this question every time I make pastry. I am so bad it it. The process looks something like this:

  • This time will be different
  • See? It’s going well!
  • Ugh. Stop tearing and separating.
  • OK. Moment of truth. The part where I transfer it to the pie plate.
  • GOOD LORD, HAVE MERCY.

That last part, is where my blood starts to boil up, adrenaline shoots through my body. A string of rather vulgar swearwords come to mind and sometimes I even say them. Out loud. Because I’m just that angry at myself and the blasted pie crust that it just wont do what I want it to. Despite all the practice, I just can’t make it work. (Sure, I might be using non-traditional flours like spelt and gluten free stuff. Yes, that does make it harder. I have confirmed this as I watched my mother-in-law — the Patron Saint of Pretty Pies — struggle to make the spelt/gluten free crust work for her).

Penelope wishes she had quit:

“I was a figure skater growing up. I skated three days a week at 5am and most days after school as well. But I couldn’t do double-rotation jumps. I’m simply too large. I am tall and big-boned. I am too heavy to rotate in the air twice, even as a very skinny fifth-grader. I wish someone had told me to stop focusing on figure skating because it would never work for me. I wish someone had helped me find what I’d be great at.”

So how do I know whether in this case Practice-Makes-Perfect or Girlfriend,-Give-Up-and-Spend-Your-Time-on-Things-You’ll-Actually-Improve-On?

A Few Principles:

  1. Is your ambition leading you to neglect valuable parts of your life? I haven’t gotten to the point where I have a singular focus on making pie crust. I am not neglecting my family or values so that I can get this frigging crust to submit. It is possible that this could happen in other areas of our lives. Certain goals require a huge time commitment.  That’s not necessarily bad. But if it is negatively affecting things you really value, that might be your cue to quit.
  2. Are you afraid of success? Do you want to quit because you’re afraid of the unknown associated with success? Your life might change a lot if you get published. What if you do become a hugely successful lawyer and speaker? What then? That can be scary.
  3. Consider your commitment. Why did you say you would do this thing? Who did you commit to doing it with? What does breaking the commitment mean for you and them? If you have a physical injury that prevents you from continuing, that’s one thing. It’s another if you’re just being flaky.
  4. Do you (like me) struggle to finish everything you start? Maybe you’ve never really figured out how to coach/motivate yourself into finishing something. You’re easily distracted and can always find something newer, trendier or more interesting (for a time) to focus on. This one is a big one I’m trying to learn.
  5. Does the payoff of quitting outweigh the investment you’ve put in? You’ve put a lot of money and time into achieving your goal and you’re considering giving it all up. Sometimes it’s good to quit but we fall subject to commitment bias and think “I can’t quit now, look how much I’ve invested!” Sometimes we should give up anyways. Sometimes we should keep going. If you have invested a lot and still want to quit, consider why that is? (Is it fear of success? Reality sinking in that you just aren’t capable like you thought you were?)

I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I have thought my response was common sense, only to have people think I made the wrong choice. We don’t all want the exact same things from life, and we’re not all going to approach everything the same way.

How do you decide whether to quit or keep going?

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