I have a birthday coming up. Yes, next month, I’m turning the big 2-3. Twenty-three. Wow, I am so not ready for this.

The average life expectancy has risen. The average female in both the United States and Costa Rica will live to be 80 years old. So I have a good 67 years left… which means that I’ve already lived 29% of my life. That is a scary thought.

I loved the Franklin Institute when I was little. The Franklin Institute is a science museum in Philadelphia, but it makes science COOL. It’s like one giant Please Touch Museum (which we also have in Philly because we rock). The exhibits explain science in terms that children (and adults with scientific aptitudes like my own) can understand. One of the exhibits that fascinated me as a child was the “Aging Machine”, as I called it. The Aging Machine took a picture of you, and then showed you how you would change through the years. It gave you wrinkles (which I already have, thank you very much) and showed you how sun and gravity would change your face. I loved it. Today, I think it might give me a panic attack.

There’s been a lot in the news recently about the quarter-life crisis. [Side rant: This is a stupid name for something that happens when we're almost a THIRD of the way through our lives.] There’s a book written on the topic. Psychiatrists are having a field day diagnosing all of their 20-something patients. Whether you understand it or not, the quarter-life crisis is a modern phenomenon. And, I fear, I am in the throes of said phenomenon.

Young people feel a lot of pressure nowadays. It is harder to get into college (so many apt students), hard to get a job (because so many people have a college degree AND our economy isn’t so strong), and even harder to balance our personal and professional lives. Parents, society, the media… they all teach us to have drive and perseverance. We should work hard, make goals, and work to become the best people we can be. Professional success is tantamount to personal fulfillment.

It’s no wonder, then, that women are freezing their eggs and bearing their first child in their late-30s or early-40s. Although we are entitled to maternity leave, who wants to take time off when we’re just starting to climb the corporate ladder? This is so not me, though. Perhaps it’s a symptom of my personal crisis, but I’m having the baby rabies. And what are the baby rabies, you ask? Why, it’s the intense desire to have babies! My biological clock has kicked into high gear and is literally screaming “tick tick tick!” in my ear. And I’m only 22. There is something wrong if I feel like life is whizzing by me, out of my control.

And let’s discuss the fact that the carefree, unattached lifestyle is now anti-establishment. When we graduate from college, young Americans are expected to get a “serious” job and join the “real world”. There’s no testing-of-the-waters, no travel, no fun jobs anymore. We have to become bankers, accountants, and businesspeople. If we don’t, our elders shake their heads, tut-tut, and begin to lecture us on how we must be serious, responsible adults. College was the best years of our lives, and now it’s time to start the downhill descent into old age. And, again, we’re in our twenties.

So here I am, adrift in my quarter-life crisis sea of doubt. I have a good job, a great house, and have started a (feline) family. I’m living the perfect little life. I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. And yet something feels wrong; I’m itching to get out of here.

Call me a fool, but I don’t believe that my carefree days are gone. I may be in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, but I know that this is the time to pursue my dreams, and not to settle for stale and boring goals. I have no husband, no children, and no responsibilities to speak of. Hold that thought. Actually, I do have one responsibility: the responsibility to myself. I am responsible for making ME happy. I deserve to be happy. And I know what will make me happy.

Costa Rica: a sweet siren song from afar. Like the mythical sailors, I am blind to anything but her call. Not only am I willing, but I want to give up the American Dream in order to live Erin’s Dream. I want to live in a world with less emphasis on consumerism and more emphasis on personal fulfillment, as you yourself define it. I want to live in a world where I work to live, not live to work. I want to travel Costa Rica by bus, with my Birkenstocks and a notepad to document my journey. Forget what I’ve always been told; I’m going to follow the beat of my own drum.

I don’t know what life has in store for me. I know what I’d like it to bring, but if life decides to throw me some strawberries instead of the lemons I’ve been expecting, then that’s okay by me. All I know is that I’m going to live life so that in 27 years’ time, when I’m blogging about the eve of my 50th birthday, there will be absolutely no talk of a midlife crisis.

As Helen Rowland wisely said, “The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.” I will live so that I have no regrets. God, I am such a rebel.