Agency and the Quarter-Life Crisis

It seems strange to think that the time of greatest agency in my life was when I was in school.
Agency here meaning feeling in control, of having the reigns of life.
I haven't had that feeling over the past four years.
So many of my peers couldn't wait to finish school because they felt trapped, slaving away for someone else and pining for graduation because it meant freedom.
But I never felt trapped or enslaved while in high school or college.

I've felt trapped and/or enslaved SINCE college.

Perhaps this is due to my knowing and thriving within the relative stability of my high school and college experience.
Knowing that the system is operating under a specific set of guidelines, and knowing that it will ALWAYS follow those guidelines, allows one to relax into the groove and find a niche.

That the adult world keeps changing the maps every time I hit a milestone is, by comparison, paralyzing.

Maybe I was trapped in school, but like Brooks Hatlen I knew how things worked and was comfortable with, even proud of, my place in the system.
Having been forced out of the system into a nebulous world which demands so much and offers so little, how else am I supposed to feel?

It's interesting that each generation reaches a point at which the world seems to have spun out of control.
For the World War II generation, it was the '60s. Yay hippies.
For the Baby Boomers, it was the '90s. Yay mass censorship.
For Generation X, we'll see.
For my generation, though, it's here and now.

It seems ironic that the youngest generation of adults (maybe second-youngest given that we have adults who barely or don't remember the '90s) has hit their X-life crisis so much earlier.
But it's because we grew up and went to high school and went to college and graduated from college in at least two different worlds.

Each generation, upon reaching their x-life crisis, pines for the time at which they felt the most in control, when the world seemed to be the most stable.
Our grandparents pined for the years immediately after WW2 (thank you, Archie Bunker).
Our parents seem to pine for the '70s.
Our older siblings pine for the '90s.
....we also pine for the '90s, or maybe the early '00s, but because our time of greatest control and stability was CHILDHOOD or ADOLESCENCE.
Thus the current market boom in '90s nostalgia.

Of course, the worst part of this for me personally is that there doesn't seem to be an end to it, unlike the trials and tribulations of childhood and adolescence and early adulthood.
The game is no longer "work hard and you will see the light at the end of the tunnel, and eventually you will emerge into the life you want".

It now seems to be simply "work hard and at some point you will die, and be glad of it".

I've had people point out many examples of individuals who weren't able to start doing what they loved until later in life, but in every case the person was MAKING MONEY and living in relative financial stability up until they had greatness thrust upon them, because they were living in a time when business was at least a little more lax in rampantly exploiting employees.

That fact makes the situation even more frustrating and increases the feelings of confusion and impotence.