My Quarter Life Crisis

by Charlotte Kymberley

"I need you to write about sex, about making it better, you know, for women". That, says our advice columnist Char, is an example of a typical lad's mag brief which I'd normally happily get working on, full of feature ideas even better than the aforementioned. I'd get myself comfortable then sit down, coffee steaming, classical music playing, packet of cigarettes next to me - half of them smoked - and get to work. So what's changed?

I first began freelancing when I was around 21. I had a passion and a knack for pumping out topical sex questions, rude quips and saucy columns in one mainstream men's magazine. I loved it. I found it easy to churn out ten 700 word articles on the trot, working through the night to deadline if needed, and walking into WH Smiths to see my name as a producer of a DVD on the front cover of a magazine was one of my proudest career moments. Sounds cheesy, but your first big job as a writer is always your little baby.

Now, I just can't seem to make it work any more. So what and where has my impetus for writing about boobs and bums gone? I find it hard, excuse the pun, to think about ideas. To think about what editors want, and lord knows I've had oppotunities... so am I simply lazy? I gathered the magazines I'd saved up over the months to study and fanned them out on the floor, then dragged my unwilling housemates in for a brainstorming session.

"There has to be something obvious here!" I lamented, looking at ten incredibly obvious top tips for shagging that I could have penned better than the author. Grr. Not only that, but this year, my tastes have changed dramatically. My thoughts, feelings, responses and ideals are opposite to how they were as little as a year ago... what is gwan down?!

"I'm having a quarter life crisis!" I wailed to my on-off significant other at his place one evening. He asked me what the hell I was waffling on about. Topping up my red wine glass and stirring home-made Thai wearing a top that didn't flash my boobs, I pondered for a moment and decided I was growing into a woman. Yeah. I know you're supposed to do that around puberty, when you have your first moment of "Who the hell am I and what is my place in this crazy world?" alongside casting aside your childhood toys, painting your room black in a long line of rebellious acts and using the F word in front of your mum if she dared question where you were spending your time. Puberty, the whole growing into a woman thing, is when you begin to question everything and move into unchartered territory.

Becoming a teenager is the ultimate confusion, boobs and hairy bits that weren't previously hairy, mood swings, confusion, angst, hormones, urges... moments that make your nan clutch her chest in sheer horror as you saunter down the stairs with shocking pink hair. A nose ring and skirts so short you can see your religion. "You look like a bull in a china shop!" my nan used to quip as I clumsily bumped into stationary objects, glare on my face. "Shurrup" I'd mumble, oblivious to my abrasiveness. "If I put some string through that hole I could lead you round the garden!" she'd continue. A row of Kevin the Teenager proportions would ensue with door slammings, "It's not fairs" and "You're so uncool".

As I turned 14, gone was the hobby horse I used to gallop with around the garden, the doll's house my grandad lovingly crafted, my barbie dolls lying in the cupboard naked (probably with pins in them voodoo stylee) and hello to my interest in the occult which hit an all-time high aged 15, prompting my grandad to ransack my bedroom and take down all my black bits of cloth. "She's an anti social devil worshipper!" he moaned to anyone who would listen. I then dyed my hair black.

Being a teen, you change your mind about what you like every ten minutes. You don't know who you are and that's the whole point. That's the time to have style faux pas, change subjects at school, swear at people, moan about the injustice of your life and have big ideas about how famous you're going to be in ten years' time.

In your late teens you change again, but it's less noticeable because the body / hormonal changes are so massive it would be impossible to resist... plus it's not exactly something new is it? You begin to shag people, binge drink six nights a week wearing fancy dress, knocking back 80p pints in piss-soaked student hovels with blokes who don't look like they've seen a flannel since 1985. You eat pot noodles and take outs and you don't get fat. You experiment with pot and it doesn't make you have a mental breakdown (that comes later) and it's perfectly acceptable to have a nap after neighbours, spend your student loan in Top Shop (or down the pub) and live in places that should rightly be condemned. My hair was then honey blonde and I visited a posh hairdresser for aubergine highlights which look sassy rather than grungy.

So what happens when you think you know what and who you are and want, and you then figure out that these ideas and the like, the ones you eventually settled on after a whole ten years or so, maybe even longer, don't matter any more? None of it makes sense... and once again, the chaotic thoughts that dominate your head about being better in the world, using your abilities, making a difference, finding your place, your identity, your purpose, are no longer. I dye my hair brown. I hate it.

It's a lonely world. You feel like you can't connect to the people you used to love connecting with. Scrap that, their eagerness for wearing strange fashion statements and having loud conversations littered with stories of drunken fumbles and sticky night clubs that play music so loud you can't hear yourself think, are replaced with a longing for a good sit down in a fairly quiet pub with a roaring fire that sells a nice bottle of Rioja.

You begin to slip into ways you never thought you'd hit until you became thirty something. Now, nights in with a hot man you regularly touch bits with in front of the telly cooking yummy food makes you feel good. Warm jumpers to sit in beer gardens and proper cigarettes as opposed to roll-ups replace furry boots and chats about Che Guevara, a love of a good book at night with a warm cup of Green & Blacks on the bedside table is preferable to stumbling home at 5am with a kebab down your top. You surf the internet for homeware, love wandering around IKEA and buy 'Psychologies' magazine.

That's why I can't write about sex for men. I am emotional, I want to discuss feelings. Lad's mags don't want to talk feelings, they want to talk technique... but to me, that happens with someone you love - when you learn about them, you learn what works. I prefer cosy sex with someone I love to chatting up random men. I want slippers and pajamas and vino, not hot pants, vest tops and high heels.

Of course glamour has its place in my life (Myla knickers, stockings, suspenders and secret agent slut fantasies) and of course, the beauty of growing up is a grown-up job with a grown-up salary so you can buy expensive beauty products, pay your rent and still enjoy a healthy happy life. But when you are at the 'in betweeny' stage of fashion / experimentation you have the creeping worry that you should be doing better, Rachel from up the road is doing better, everyone else is doing something more fulfilling than I am!

This year alone, three friends have got married and two are having babies. And what am I doing? I'm not saying I want to buckle down with the next passing gent and procreate, but I guess I am ready to 'settle' down. EEK! My quarterlife crisis has given me many negative issues. I can't write about what I used to love writing about, I don't want to read the same books anymore so trawling a book store on a Sunday is no longer a nip in and out cos' I know what I like affair, even the food I used to love has been knocked on the head and replaced with more exotic dishes cooked from scratch. The clothes I wear, my costume jewellery, how I spend my time, what I like to watch, all it seems, has suddenly changed 360!

So what is positive about a quarter-life crisis? It gets to you, deep under your skin and you think, right, I gotta change this and that yada yada and oh it hurts. Let him go. Let them go... stop trying so hard... let it all come to you because at the end of the day fate has a way of bringing into our lives the man you love, the job of your dreams, the friends like the ones on Cold Feet. It's just a little hard to believe sometimes... but as one person recently told me, 'Sometimes you need to let one building collapse before something more beautful can be created'.

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