Ask HN: Tips on coping with my quarter-life crisis

Along the lines of "step 1", don't try to gamble/invest/go-all-in on stacks of chips, stocks, or start-ups. That will amplify and prolong your misery, as you fall behind more on your mental ledger.

I've done it before and lost 10 years of time (well, assuming I'd have used the time better). And, only in the last year did I get a second chance by basically making everything back.

And now, I'm left with the same question: what do I do now?

In retrospect the cause was definitely the rest of life being unbalanced and unfulfilled. The job is only part of it in that it takes up time and doesn't fit your desired persona.*

Unfortunately I don't have the answer except, as above, try to improve your life step by step. If it means changing careers, great. Just know that it's not a cure all and you should take the long view rather than expecting instant relief.

* Maybe crude but at the base level I think we're unhappy in our 20's when we don't feel successful enough to bang women on the regular. Then everything else gets lumped in.

For me now past my 20's, and as a parent, it's still bothersome but maybe not with the same urgency. I'm now thinking what I can do that's meaningful or interesting and has a better quality of life.

I'm 30 now. In my 20s I was all over the place. I studied maths, did my masters, was on the path to acadamia, jacked it all in and went snowboarding for a year. Almost stayed on working as a DJ in the Alps. Then I felt I should go to get a real job, but real job offers scared me because the work seemed to lack any substance (I basically thought the work sounded pointless). I tried a few things and then eventually landed working in mobile tech in Africa and Asia and loved it. Then I moved to Kenya and started a tech startup. I have no idea what will happen next. The key lesson I've learned from all of this is that I could have never predicted what would have happened over this last decade. There have been some ups and downs, but one thing I'm clear on is that I have no regrets about doing what I felt was truly important at the time. If you think it's truly important to go and be a skiing instructor right now then why not just do it. It's hard to be too logical about the these things... try not to leave yourself destitute of course, but it doesn't sound like that's a big risk!

I'm 48, but I remember my quarter-life crisis pretty well. Long story short, I sort of realized I was getting tired of the 8 - 10 hr a day coding job and felt the need to do other things, specifically go to film school. But I did not have a definitive sense of that - it was a bit of a tug of war feeling.

After dithering a bit, I decided to stick around at my job as a new project had started - I ended up being architect for a satellite link control system for the DoD. It was a hellacious project, a bit stressful, but it actually got into the field (unlike a lot of DoD projects) and was of some use to the troops [the bureaucrats did not want it because it put them out of a job, aka less paperwork]. So in terms of life achievements, I actually did something...

After that, I went to grad school (again, asked myself: film school?), got my MSc, then after really getting tired of the BS in IT after another couple of years (right before the 1st Internet bubble popped), I finally ran off to film school. It only ended up being a bit of a vacation, however; if I'd gone when I was 26, I'd probably be in the film industry. Or maybe not...

Anyways, the therapist I was seeing when I was 30 (before I went to film school, trying to figure out the depression, dissatisfaction with life etc) told me something quite useful - part of the unconscious reasons for choosing a particular career path are tied to your emotional needs at that particular point in your life. I wish I'd stuck it out with the trying to do film related stuff after going to school, but for a lot of reasons, life got in the way (got too used to the easy money...) The BS in the film industry is much like and worse than the BS in IT...

What you say in your writeup struck me - the need to communicate with others. So I suspect you are in the same general place as me when I was 26. That I took as a sign something emotional and unconscious is going on. You are young enough to try something different, if only for a few years, and it won't affect your life path as much compared to being over 30 and still having the same fundamental difficulties (which you do not want, believe me)

If the reality of being a ski instructor turns out to not be exactly what you need, you will still have gotten useful information about what you actually might need, even if it turns out you just needed a break from IT for a bit. So my advice is to go for it, assuming you don't have any other pressing responsibilities that insist you ought to stay in IT.

So don't create your own startup? Doesn't creating your own startup give you a more invaluable skill set? People say you learn faster when you start a startup. What do you think of that statement? How is doing a corporate job a smarter move than going all-in on startups?

I use to glorify traveling around the world. I would dream about it from my corporate job. Then an opportunity arose to travel while working for two months. I did that and had a great time. But then I realized I don’t really care about traveling the world, two months was enough. And so I was lucky I didn’t quit my job and do that. Most likely you need to fix how you currently live, not in a drastic move to another country way, but get a new job, new apartment and new friends.