Last weekend I had somewhat of a mental breakdown. I know I’m going to sound like a conceited, ungrateful brat for saying this but I realized that I accomplished everything I ever wanted – I have a job that I love and that pays well, I don’t work long hours, I finally have a cat, I have great friends, a small car, an amazing and affordable flat in the city center and I fixed my mental health struggles (for the most part) – but is that supposed to be It?

Don’t get me wrong – I highly appreciate everything I have and I realize that I live a good life. Trust me when I say that I am beyond thankful and proud of everything that I have accomplished. I am very grateful of having this life.

However, I found myself feeling overwhelmed by the thought of being “done” with everything. I don’t want kids, I’m okay with not having a partner and I do not need to own a house and fancy ass car. I am perfectly content with what I own, I’m not big on travelling and I don’t need unnecessary luxury to fill a void. So what more is there to life?

The thought of continuing like this, with nothing ever changing, for the next 10 years suddenly felt scary. So of course, I got the impulsive urge to leave the country and start a new life in New York City. I started to immediately romanticize the thought of being in a new city, meeting new people and gaining new experiences. In my head, I was already daydreaming about what it would be like to live there. I loved New York when I visited and got really excited: I looked up flats, potential gym memberships, looked at our internal job offers over there and I already figured out how much I would have to earn in order to afford the same living standard as I do right now. Yup, I go nuts sometimes (some might say it’s simply the Virgo in me 🤪).

And then I talked to my mom. She was all for it and said she wanted me to experience new things, especially if my firm can make it happen so easily. But when we started to talk about how we’ll simply FaceTime when I’m gone, she started to cry at the thought of me leaving. Which made me ugly cry as well. I was brought back down to earth and reality hit me: What am I even talking about? I can’t leave my mom behind, she’s all the family I have.

So, inevitably I realized that – surprise – I won’t be moving to NYC and this entire charade was a hideous episode of me having my first real quarter-life-crisis.

And now what? I’ll be in London for the BLACKPINK concert in July and as I’m staying there for a couple days I want to get to know the city. London is a fairly cheap 1-hour-flight away, meaning I could visit my mom like once a month and I could potentially continue to do my job from the office over there, as I already know the team and there is barely a time difference. In the next couple of weeks, or even months, I want to figure out whether I want take that step and actually move away from home for some time.