Is a mid-life crisis in my twenty’s possible?
I am here because I knew from the age of sixteen exactly where I wanted my life to head, my goals and plans.
It is only now, when I look back that how much of what I planned for, actually ended up taking me along other paths in the process.
I had always wanted to study a bachelor of business at university but somehow I ended up doing a bachelor of education and a bachelor of nursing for a semester, before applying for the police force, starting an online swimwear store and then finally selecting to study what I originally wanted to study; a Bachelor of Business Marketing.
Why did it take me so long to do what I always wanted to do? I don’t know, but it did end up making me confident in my final decision knowing I had tried a little bit of everything before making the decision.
All I knew is that right up until 2016, as a bachelor of business marketing graduate, a swimwear designer with a thriving online business and just landed my first full-time job upon finishing university that I was finally where I had always dreamed of being.
Although I was not met with the feeling of accomplishment, and achieving my dreams.
Instead I had never felt more lost.
As a person who had always lived life multi-tasking through multiple priorities daily, I was suddenly just working a Monday to Friday 9-5 job. I was still maintaining my online business but no longer enjoying it. I was genuinely feeling no personal satisfaction.
It was a very real feeling of emptiness that I think no one can understand unless you’ve hit that point in your life where everything you had known that made you happy, has now just become everything that does not make you happy. The feeling was slowly destroying my creativity and carefree attitude. It was a mid-life crisis at twenty-two.
For the first time, I was free from routine, responsibility, studying and gained a full time career. Yet I was empty, I wanted to so badly cry for help.
I felt like I was becoming a totally different person to who I once was. Even investing more money into my swimwear brand no longer felt enjoyable. I have had massive impacting changes on my life this year (which I hope to build confidence to share publicly one day) but I feel like it’s in those moments that life has truly tried to push me in a new path.
I’ve learnt that I want to deliver a service, rather than a product. I even considered studying education (again). I just wanted so badly to help people, to give my love, to talk. I just had an instinct that all I was doing was not serving my life long purpose. The purpose in which we were born for that being really ‘living’.
These feelings, this crisis has saved me. It has saved me from years of unhappiness I could have spent thinking I am living by settling for the choices I had previously made for my future self. It has saved me to allow me to rediscover who I am and realise that who I was then is not who I am now.
It is okay to evolve.
The world is truly our oyster. It doesn’t mean just because you studied a university degree, started a business or did a specific course that THAT is where your future will be. It just means you needed to cross that path to take you where you are meant to be.
I don’t have regrets. I literally just quit my job, sold my business that I have spent growing the last three years and am moving to Darwin. All within the next 4 weeks.
You know what, I couldn’t be more excited. Excited for the journey that is to come, wherever this life takes me. I have learnt that it’s all about my decisions and to just trust.
Wholeheartedly,
Mikhailla. x