...and get a copy of Gail Sheehy's "Passages." She covered this topic some 30(!) YEARS ago, and said it better, than any of the psychobabble that's been turning up on Broadsheet, etc. lately.

Jackoff and the Teen-Stalk: When teenagers engage in over-the-top sexual and emotional behaviors such as chronic masturbation and psychotic jealousy.

Twenty to go around: When people in their 20s have sex with everything that moves. (Also known as "Horn-y o' twenty")

Thricicle: When being 30 makes a person become more cold and aloof.

Fortitude: When 30-somethings deal with their problems and happily confront their 40s.

Conniption fifty: When the realization of a half-century of being alive makes people go nutty.

Dixty: When people in their 60s start thinking the world owes them something for the longevity, and so become dicks. (Like the white-haired guy who ran the red light and almost plowed into me on the road the other day, then acted like nothing happened.)

Se7en-ties: When people in their 70s file down their fingerprints and start acting a little Spacey.

Haties: When people in their 80s become so utterly bitter that they despise everybody under 65, and thus move to retirement communities where the zoning restricts the young (i.e. Sun City, Arizona).

When I was in my 30's we had only one boring, old-fashioned term for this: whining.

Wait, what? People in their mid-30s are dissatisfied with their lives? People in their mid-20s are having a hard time reconciling what they thought they'd become with what they have to do to survive? People in their 50s wonder what to do with themselves now that their children have left home and they actually have to redefine themselves as people and not "mom" or "dad"?

Who knew?

Listen to some Jackson Browne and watch the Big Chill and get a handle on it. You're not special because you are having a hard time feeling comfortable in your own skin; most of us feel that way most of the time.

Midlife crisis doesn't still work.

I had one of these this weekend as I had water spraying in my basement, I was on the phone with the plumber and no matter what he told me to do the water would not stop.

I hated my life. I bemoaned not having a husband. I cursed my existence and questioned why I thought owning my own home was a good idea.

Mostly I wanted somebody else to be the one getting all wet and facing the emergency plumber bill.

And then I realized that I was behind the valve, not facing it and I was turning the nut the wrong way.

Total thrisis.

Other people have to grow up a lot faster in worse conditions - where having a whinefest and calling it a "thrisis" isn't an option.

Life is hard, but there is big difference between agonize over where next botox inject come from and where clean water come from or if can go outside without blow up.

Feel happy happy me for live in country where give navel gaze buzzword and call it big problem.

Svutlana

just thinking how godawful that word is.

One catchall term for the realization that life sucks and then you die.

"Post-lifesis SM seeks pre-lifesis SF for mindless good times."

... means being 33 and living alone in New York City while trying to build a career. You called your mom to get some relief. Does she still live in the house you grew up in? And how far away from NYC is that?

The bigger problem for many people these days is not the decade-age you are and its associated angst, but what striving for "success" means. For career-oriented professionals, both women and men, that often means having to uproot yourself and move some distance away from family and friends, so you can't see them as easily or as frequently as you once did. You might find "success" in your career, but at what cost?

that people would write to exhort Sarah H to quit whining. Isn't that her point to begin with?

I know a lot of people have (will) say that the thrisis idea and all idea about angst or problems are BS because other people have it worse. That is a silly argument because as individuals our expectations for ourselves and the world are colored by our experiences, not the experiences of a legless 18 year old rebel in the congo. At 20 or so everyone sets goals for themselves that are often rather ambitious (I want to go to Harvard Law, I want to be a NY times best selling writer, I want to get my parents to say good job just once instead of second guessing, ect). As we get older the objectives seem further out (though still possible) and the stress about reaching them gets more poignant. After all in the mid to late 20s you're almost 30, in the 30s you're headed to 40 and once you hate 50...50 is the age where dreams go to die.

More or less you have 30 good years. Those years start around 22 and end around 52 (you can keep a good thing going into the 50s, but its hard to start one). Even a few years in, at a newly minted 25 I find myself stressing about how far I am from this or that goal and whether I've made the right choice on several key decisions. The older one gets the more decisions they have to wonder about and the less time they have to get to their goals/fix mistakes so obviously the more stress they end up with. The 30s are where you decide whether you're going to make relationship goals or become Rudy Gulliani or Liz Taylor, swapping out spouses faster then many Americans swap out pairs of shoes. They're where you either head strong into your 40s and beyond in a rewarding career or get set to stagnate in middle management till retirement Drew Carry style. Just because you're not dodging sniper fire or suffering through a minimum wage job doesn't mean the experience of life is leisurely, its just different.