shouldive, wouldive, couldive

I was reading about quarter-life crisis in the newspaper today.

Apparently, it’s a phenomenon, especially amongst young working women. It all goes back to the pressure of what “should” be happening in your life.

You should be working, you should have a great job, you should be putting one hundred percent into what you’re doing, you should have a great friend circle – no, not one or two friends, like a group of confidantes who you should have amazing after work hours with. You should have an active social life – parties, weekends away – if not with your friends then with your should-have significant other. And if all that wasn’t enough – you should have a great slender body and be fit and active – especially because you should be having an active sex life.

It’s true. The pressure is immense. Thinking about it I don’t qualify for a lot of the ‘should’s’ listed – but that should be alright, right?

I mean after a long work day, you can’t be expected to transform into a stiletto-wearing, pub-hopping woman of the night – we don’t all live on the sets of Sex and the City.

And outside of work, which is about nine hours a day for me, where is the time to catch up with a circle of friends – who also may have lives outside of you? No, unfortunately we do not live on the sets of Friends either. Everyone needs to get home, everyone has to travel, it isn’t realistic to assume that people can just meet and chat for an hour, unless you live five minutes away from them.

And the significant others. Considering we have no time outside our nine hour days, we rarely meet people outside of our immediate work place, or outside our profession. Which limits the possibilities a tad, doesn’t it? Are we all expected to hook up within the circle like some kind of inter-career marriage ritual? Besides, what if you meet a teacher, and his work ends at 5 in the evening, while yours goes on for another four hours, by which time he is already home and uninterested in moving, or has made other plans?

And the body bit. How are you expected to keep a fit body when you have to eat whatever your canteen offers because you have no time to dictate your diet? How do you make time, 2 hours a day to go to the gym?

Note - people with fabulous bodies make it their life’s mission to have fabulous bodies.
You think those damned Pussycat Dolls do anything but yoga, gym and pilates?

Real woman have bodies dammit!

I feel for working women going through all this pressure. And the sad part is it’s not going to stop just because you’ve identified it. Apparently you should make a list about what you want to achieve before a certain time – in order to be happy in your life.

I almost made a list.

Then I realised it was just another ‘should’ – which really should stop, shouldn’t they?