Anyone can tell you that fact is different from fancy, but this becomes a bit thornier when it comes time to live it. We grow up on romantic comedies, urban legends, fairytales, media threats and promises and then we're shot into the "real world” and expected to live there. What’s more, the whole separating truth from whimsy is even harder for the writer who is paid to keep one foot in the hovering what if. I know my way around fiction, but I’m frequently lost in reality.

It seems like everyone has so much advice to give but is silent on the subject of dealing with the ups and downs of an un-airbrushed life. How happy should we be? What is life supposed to feel like? When should we just stick it out and when should we push for something better? When is it settling and when is it just real life? My deepest mind tells me that there is no “should” and “supposed to,” but I still want some answers, buddy.

Everyone I know is going through some slice of life crisis, be it quarter or mid. I guess life is a constant state of flux, and contentment rests on how you deal with it. That's not to say that life is always painful, but it's frequently problematic and puzzling. Seen from all angles, crisis is fascinating.

In medical terms it can mean "the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death" and that's often very close to how it feels in non-medical terms. I find it so hard to balance my great big dream of the future with the joy of the small things right now. I don’t want to spend my youth pushing towards some fabled idea of success and miss out on what life is probably all about.

I will never forget seeing Ben Stiller's Reality Bites for the first time and thinking that he had really captured that state of youthful confusion on celluloid. The words of one of the characters, Troy Dyer, have also always stuck with me:

"There's no point to any of this. It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know a Quarter-Pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt."

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” There may be a point to all of it, but it's just not the one we thought we were looking for. The point is the Quarter-Pounder, the sky, cackling laughter, Camel Straights, and your own melt.

I'll let you know when I learn to take my own advice, but until then, what’s yours?