Quarter life crisis

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I really feel like I'm having a quarter-life crisis. That sounds dramatic and I don't even know what that means really but I don't know what else to call it. I do know that I'm 26 and feel like I should be farther along in life than I am. I've never been a person with a "life plan", meaning I've never said to myself (or others) "by xx age I'm going to be married and by xx age I'm going to have a kid and by xx age I'm going to own a house." But now that I'm 26, I feel like I'm in the exact same place that I was when I was 22. Granted, I graduated college and I live on my own, which is more than I could have said at 22, but I'm still single, still living paycheck to paycheck, still living in my hometown, still not happy with my weight, sitting alone on a Friday night writing on my silly little blog. I feel like a total lame-ass, for lack of a better word. I feel like so many people in my life are engaged or married, moving away, starting their lives as adults, and here I am, same shit, different day.

I feel like I missed my chance to move away and create new experiences for myself. When I started college, my plan was to move to a big city like Chicago for a few years right after graduation, and then come back to Columbus when I was ready. Well, my mom died my senior year of college and I could not leave my dad, so I moved in with him when I graduated and worked temp jobs until I finally got hired on full-time at my current organization. Now, I feel like it's too late to move away. I really don't know if I want to move away necessarily, leaving my sweet baby niece or my dad with all his health issues. But then I think about if I had moved away, where could I have been by now? I know it's not worth thinking "what if?" but I can't help it, since I'm not doing very much in my current situation.

I hate to complain and I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm just saying I'm disappointed with where I am right now. I absolutely cannot stand when people are all talk: if you don't like something, change it. That's why I got serious about losing weight last year; I was tired of always feeling fat and saying I was fat and never really doing anything about it. I feel like I'm a pretty intelligent human being and when I want something, I have enough drive and determination to achieve it. But right now I don't really know how to change my circumstances so that I'm genuinely happy with myself and my life at age 26. I feel behind of where I should be, behind everyone else. And I'm not sure how to change that.

Don't get me wrong; I am so thankful for my health and the health of the people that I love, for living so close to my family and for having a job that I love, which is more than a lot of people can say. It's just those other things, those "life" things, that I'm missing and don't know how to fix it.

This post is strictly a "speak my mind" type of post. I'm hoping I can look back at it at the end of 2012 and see things in a different light. Until then, I guess I'll be working on getting to where I want to be.