Mid-Life Crisis

Funnily enough, a female friend of mine was saying just the same thing about Keifer to me last night.

In the middle of one of these. It ain't pretty.

I've put mine back a bit as we don't retire now until 67/68...

FML

:(

taking up smoking because why not. Gives me an excuse to ask the girl at work if she wants to take a cigarette break. "You smoke? lol" was her reply.

Wife and I are feeling it bad. Only solution we can come up with is traveling for a year or so. I'm intimidated by the risk of taking such a plunge, but we've got to do something to change course. There are 4 kids involved btw. Anyone know anything about home-schooling??

I'm certainly experiencing mid-life gut spread, and the accompanying aches and pains constantly. I keep worrying I have cancer of the everything. I've never felt so unfit and run down, even tho Im nowhere near as bad on vices as once I was.

otm

I'm like, if I feel like this now, what the fuck is actual old age going to feel like? No wonder old people are a bunch of crotchety old shits!

My parents will both be 66 this year. My mom's had health problems for as long as I've been an adult, but my dad is still fit as an ox. I guess that means I'll lie somewhere in the middle.

I know its my errant lifestyle thats catching up with me (I should wear shoe orthotics and dont anymore and now i have completely rooted knees and hips; I drink and smoke, I'm unfit, etc). I'm gonna try and get on top of that now, cos I know the longer one leaves it the harder that gets.

I haven't had a physical since the 90s at least. I'm sure my cholesterol is through the roof, I'm probably at risk for diabetes (it runs in the family and I eat like a college freshman), and then there's the smoking. Also, I don't work out. I don't jog. I barely even walk unless I have to. I feel healthy-ish, but I'm expecting everything in my body to just break down one day soon.

moving 4 kids for yr midlife crisis would be a dick move imo take it from a former kid with dick move specialist parents

I think I had the crisis about three or four years ago, been chronically sick for about 10 years as of this month, I do worry about how it'll be in 20 years or 10 years given my health is shit now, not least cos my resolution to do all the things I want to do regardless of how I feel includes drinking as well as more positive things.

I think a combination of hobbies, exercise, travel is probably the best way out. Everyone seems to start with exercise, which is good but ime only sustains you to a point - though it's very achievable.

I'm maybe a year older than you LocalGarda, I think? My main conundrum is that I don't feel anything like my age - im in my mid 30s but still identify as being in my 20s. Guess im lucky that i could still pass for someone a lot younger than i am. I've a feeling that one day I'll wake up feeling old and lacking in spirit though so I'm taking measures - cutting down on drinking/smoking, exercising 3 times a week and eating more grains and veg.

I hope to have a decent midlife crisis closer to ten years from now tbh. took a while to even get as far as I have so far.

i could still pass for someone a lot younger than i am.

You do here all the time !

I have back issues and I want a motorcycle.

Xp well I started posting in 2000 and never upped my posting game, so

15 years we've been at this. wtf.

Mid ilx crisis :-/

tbh recently I'm suffering from the cycle where I get my shit together for six months or so, am healthy and happy and motivated, and then realize that I don't know where to channel that energy. then I lapse back into bad habits for a while. this boom-and-bust cycle isn't sustainable, and I'm getting to the point where I should really act on some of the things that I want to do in my life, but I still have a lack of organization and willpower! makes it easy to lapse into bad habits that hide a lack of fulfillment.

Treating your mid-life crisis as a joke and framing your actions as humorous when taking to younger women: Classic or dud

This bit from a recent book I read really resonated with me:

"I found I no longer had anything to look forward to. Perhaps in itself this wasn't such a dreadful thing, but it soon became a sense that I didn't have any future at all...The imaginary point at which everything was finally going to be resolved - which had dangled in front of me like a carrot all my life, like the proverbial carrot- was suddenly gone, and I saw that it had been the basic way I had structured the world....

Was this what happened when you no longer had anything to look forward to? That automatically you started to look back? But if this was meant to be nostalgia, you could have fooled me, There was nothing fond about these memories; they hit me like a blow....the sense of loss- as though I'd lost everything, absolutely everything- was so intense as to be unbearable...The insomnia, the embittered life-review."

geez yeah

i think i skipped this whole bit

pretty sure i went from kid to old fart overnight sometime in the past 3-4 years

The imaginary point at which everything was finally going to be resolved

Ouch.

(Lately, I've been thinking back on times like my late teens, or late 20s, and feeling a horrible ache to crawl back into that time when things were a shit of a lot simpler, and ... have a do-over?)

What would you do different?

Well, there's the big question, innit. I mean, loads of things, but if I did, I wouldn't be where I am now. I think sometimes I dont want to change things so much as relive more innocent days but with my current sense of maturity and purpose? I was such a twit at 18.

I mean, you did those things and have that knowledge and imo it is only too late to apply most of it if you are in fact dead or near dead. If you're near death, scrawl it on a wall in the hopes someone will find it before it is too late.

Hm thats a fair point (tho lol I cant see myself going back to gymnastics or rollerskating in a hurry).

How old is everyone having a crisis here?

I'm 44.

closer to 40 than 30

It's interesting to see people have felt similarly to how I do, cos basically I got sick at 22 and I kind of wonder what if or blame that for everything. I wasn't so sure that people get that feeling of loss anyway. Maybe having something to blame makes it easier, though not in every way.

I have been thinking lately that these feelings might be to do with how I experience time - and the way your memory of another time in which you were an adult, perhaps seemingly the same, can play on the mind. Or as per what Bob posted, the past and the future just become negatives, but they still draw attention more than the present.

I guess the ratio of that is different for everyone - I have been trying to think about which tense I actually dwell on.

Ymmv obviously.

32 btw, possibly too young for all this but chronic illness kind of accelerated it. Though in a way I've prob been happier each year since first getting ill.

Well, there's the big question, innit. I mean, loads of things, but if I did, I wouldn't be where I am now. I think sometimes I dont want to change things so much as relive more innocent days but with my current sense of maturity and purpose? I was such a twit at 18.

yeah the older i get the more i realise that 'youth is wasted on the young' is painfully true

oh wow, hi dere this thread

I haven't had a physical since the 90s at least. I'm sure my cholesterol is through the roof, I'm probably at risk for diabetes (it runs in the family and I eat like a college freshman), and then there's the smoking. Also, I don't work out. I don't jog. I barely even walk unless I have to. I feel healthy-ish, but I'm expecting everything in my body to just break down one day soon.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, June 18, 2015 2:06 AM (Yesterday)

Except for the smoking, this was me. About 3-4 years ago the breakdown started. Now: meds for diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol and acid reflux. BEWARE!

I think the point at which you realise you're no longer *young* any more is different from the point at which your body starts *feeling* physically older. I'm at point #1 but not really at #2 yet. I can imagine having a bit crisis at the point of which I realise that the future is almost definitely going to be worse than the past.

I guess that a lot of youth is about a lot of (relatively) attainable goals - education, partying, independence, sex, new surroundings, relationships, etc. When you settle down a bit more the idea of those things as defined aims that shape your life tends to go away. If you're not particularly careerist and are unsure about having kids there's a lot more of a sense of 'what happens next?' It's not unpleasant, quite the opposite, but there's no widely-accepted shape for that sort of life to take from then on.

Exercise, personally-fulfilling projects, travel are all good answers though.

Like as I get older, the appeal of something like gardening makes more and more sense to me.

Since I started exercising 3 or more times a week, I've started feeling quite evangelical about the idea that physical activity is essential to keeping your mind and body in gear. Even if you eat crap and smoke all day, getting a sweat on seriously helps ward off these feelings. Problem is, it's often really hard to motivate yourself at first if you're not used to it and the fear of throwing up or passing out or just sucking in general is sometimes too much to allow oneself to go through with it. But yeah ffs, do it, even if it's a quick jog round the block once every few days or some light stretching at first, it's got to be worth something...

For me, part of the problem of getting older is seeing other people acting older, almost like it's expected of them I guess? I know a lot of people, who aren't married, haven't got kids yet, don't necessarily have taxing careers, suddenly decide they have to start behaving like their parents for some reason, or not doing certain things because they're 'too old for that sort of thing now', which is something I'll never understand I guess.

The other thing is being surrounded with people younger than me - I'm one of the older people in my job at the moment, and that can feel a bit degrading on occasion when you see people who've only been doing what I do for a short while get promoted etc.

none of these things bother me too much these days. i know people who are pushing 50 and have a more youthful outlook on life than i do, so i tend to bear them in mind any time i get down about it.

39
Prime time for a crisis

Dreading 40. Just dreading it. And sorry to those older than 40, but 40 is old.

And yeah 30 is old too if you're 29. But still.

For me the biggest challenge is just trying to relax romantically and not think about cheating. Going through your formative years enamored with art and music probably doesn't help. Music and "romance" for lack of a better term go hand in hand in my mind.

44, turning 45 in about a month, and yeah having one of these pretty hard. The literary quote from bob six a few posts up captures it very well. My body feels barely functional (never smoked never drank much, but had colitis since I was 14 which became crohns about 10 years ago) and I'm supporting both of us in nyc on a not-large junior manager income at a job that is becoming increasingly difficult as the company expands. Also every year since I turned 40 there has been another grueling, grinding "life event" to barely get through (deaths, illnesses, injuries, fallings-out). And my mom is 86 and for fucks sake pls let her stay in the very sturdy shape she is currently in. Also I seem to be having a psychological issue which mimics ADD but surely can't be that since who develops ADD suddenly in their mid forties???

Exercise, personally-fulfilling projects, travel are all good answers though.

I agree with this a lot.

I do think there's some subtle social pressure in place that decrees that exercise and travel are 'approved' activities, but that is less positive about projects and hobbies.

For example, if you're a middle aged man with a project outside the 'norm' of DIY, lycra clad cycling etc - you can be stigmatised as 'immature' if you spend a lot of time on it or are enthusiastic abot it. It'#s almost as if society would prefer you to get a garden shed.

^ but this is all to do with 'acting your age', as if you get to a certain age and you're expected to pursue exactly the same activities as your parents did. Fuck it, if you're 65 and want to spin grime tunes then I'll be the last to call it a mid-life crisis. The whole concept of the 'mid-life crisis' (as in, the guy who buys a motorcycle at 40 or what have you) is ageist anyway. That's not a crisis - it's just being able to afford a commodity you've wanted all your life.

I'll be 39 in a few weeks. I think I had a bit of a mini-MLC early last year, but I'm not sure if it was that or just a lot of bad things happening at once that caused a major bout of depression. It nearly ended my marriage though so it was pretty serious.

Tbh I'm pretty relaxed about turning 40. One of my best friends is 40 today and my wife is 42, I kind of felt when I turned 38 that I'm basically 40 already.

I haven't had to deal with any physical problems yet though. Other than chronic one I've had for 20 years.

I did take up exercising last year after my depression got really bad and it did help but I just quit after doing it for a bit over a year, that was because they moved the class to a park and tbh I hate exercising anyway and exercising in shitty wind and rain, getting bitten by midges, and sneezing from hayfever is just not going to cut it. I stuck it out last summer but I fucking hated it and couldn't face doing it again. Maybe I'll look for another indoor class.

Just turned 36 and thankfully seem to be pretty free of this. Having a baby probably helps. Occasional pangs of faint regret at not having done some stuff earlier (why did I wait until 30 to get married when we met at 22? Why did I wait until 30 to start riding a bike? Why did I wait until 35 to have a kid? Guess we bought a house at 28 which is quite young these days, though).

Physically in better shape than I was 10 years ago, mostly; play more sport / get more exercise and am certainly fitter, though it takes longer to get over injuries. Never smoked, barely drink anymore (having drunk a LOT at university - who doesn't? - and quite a bit during my 20s), eat better (mostly) than I ever used to.

There are getting-older desires - a bigger, nicer house with a bigger, nicer garden; a bigger, nicer car, etc - but these are by and large pretty trivial and easy to push out of my head.

Mostly, during my 30s, I've found a lot to be said for resurrecting earlier hobbies; in my 20s I pretty much gave up playing football, cycling, boardgames, and going round friends' houses to play music with them, but I've started doing them all again, with a vengeance, in my 30s, and it's great. It feels like this is who I am. Is that acting my age? I don't really care. I do have a desperate desire not to end up like my dad, though; he's a small-minded, miserable old man. All he ever does is moan, and he seems to have no interests beside moaning. I don't ever want to be like that.

By and large I feel like I'm pretty much where I'd want to be, realistically.

I've been thinking about aging a lot but I don't think I'm having this quite yet thankfully. I think that's mostly because I don't feel anywhere near as old as I am. People are always surprised when they find out my age. idk. I need to start exercising more but I eat pretty well and I'm trying to get my shit together. I feel like I still have so much to do and look forward to like kid(s)(hopefully) and travel etc. That said, I have a lot of moments where I kind of stop and think "holy fucking shit I can't believe x was 20 years ago". Yet, I woke up this morning with a really strong desire to go dancing tonight so idk. I'm trying to be cool about the whole thing. We'll see how long that lasts.

That's where I am too. Haven't been out proper dancing in a fair while, but I'd be so up for it if offered. Part of the reason I don't go is because none of my friends seem to want to any more. I still feel like I've got a lot more potential in me; a lot more to do and many more fundamental goals to achieve in life - my only worry is cramming it all in before I die or get too old to do it all. I have a long-term partner but we're not married and have no kids, and I know she has the same outlook when it comes to life goals - all that stuff feels like it can come later for now. I've come to realise that it would be a nightmare for me to wake up with nothing to wish for or aim towards. But then I don't know what that's like either.

[important caveat: feel like I'm dealing with my own nonsense as well as I ever have in my life, broadly speaking. but]

the nothing to look forward to, the sense of loss and waste, the slow placid resignation to living and dying single, the realization that I overestimated my "powers", or blew them: this is all there, frequently, the stately rhythm I'm in now

and so it goes.

the real horrors are reserved for the growth of my children, the goneness of their childhoods, the anguish that I can't really relive it or replay it or enjoy it again - tempered with the knowledge that we all have to grow and that's ok, of course

and I think my sense of being calmly run aground is transferring itself to the world around me, when I tell you how I feel I think I'm also telling you how England 2015 looks, to me

on the other hand 2 weeks ago i partied the heartiest i have done in an eternity, marred only by my body reminding me how old i am with a mauling of a biochemical comedown

but even then which was broadly fine there was that mildly bitter failure to make much

connection

this isnae a crisis, I'm just drawing maps

oh but i can't read, forgot that ! can't decide what book to pick up and pursue, so pick up nothing. dunno what that is but i don't like it

I've not been able to read since university. I manage about a book a year, if that. A couple since Nora was born, so maybe there's an upwards turn here.

i'm interested to know why not? i'm always jealous of people who get through a lot of books because I seem to be unable to get through more than a book every three months even if i REALLY apply myself. And it's nothing to do with eyesight, it's more a comprehension/patience thing.

and also spending more time online than reading fiction.

Folks, no need to worry, according to no less an authority than LJ, you can still be youthful when you're pushing 70, uh, as long as you're in Wire.

Slightly freaked by all these ILXors apparently falling apart. So far, I've always had the happy knack of being much healthier than I feel or, more to the point perhaps, look. Whenever I've had medicals/ blood tests etc, I'm not sure who is more surprised by the results, me or the medical fraternity. I'm delighted my mother's genes have won out over my father's genes (or however that works) as there's, on average, a 20 year gap in life expectancy between the two sides of the family.

My midlife crisis was awesome (quit job, went back to school in order to do a 180 degree career change, packed up a truck with spouse and cats and kicked around different places for a year, ate a lot of tasty food all over the place). I am looking to having another midlife crisis in approximately five to seven years, when I'll be upwards of 46.

The midlife crisis would not have been awesome had it not coincided with my spouse's midlife crisis and we wanted to do the same things i.e. quit jobs, piss off.

is getting tattoos at 33 crisis-y?

i know i'm still young(-ish) but i think about this stuff a lot (and identify with what other people have said about both feeling young and ancient simultaneously). i'm generally very happy with my life so thoughts like "is this what it is for the foreseeable future? am i really not going to live in another city, or be in a different relationship?" are not unpleasant, just a little bittersweet.

turning 30 came with a back injury that may never be fully healed, so it's been a character-building thing to accept it and be happy that i can generally do everything i want to do without pain (just not run like i used to or play sports, which i didn't do anyway). and daily exercise is super essential for general well-being, yeah.

pretty much all of the excitement and novelty in my life comes from making & releasing music, and it's been interesting to collaborate with much younger people at the same time that my friends stopped going to shows (at least to anything that goes past 11pm). while the music thing has been better than ever, for some reason it's hard to picture myself doing the same thing at 45 or 50 (but also hard to imagine stopping).

and speaking of friends, as some good friends have moved away and others have circled back, it's hit me really deeply how important it is to have those friends nearby and to keep up the relationships. also that it's really nice to have friends who are not trying to have kids.

nah

It has to be out of character for the person, there are no universals.

Just today a boomer perv in a SUV stared at me getting down to Ramble Tamble in my own car for so long he missed his light & mistook my pointing at the light for ? Maybe he was lost in his postmidlife crisis of laying down the male gaze where it's not welcome.

There really should be classes for boomers to relearn how to drive as they age, also instruction on not skeeving out others

It was pretty shocking in a lol type of way. I only know he was staring bc I turned my head and he gave me this Don Henley head nod and I was like the light's green you moran

What a world that guy must live in!

omg Don Henley head nod

I feel like there is a broieness in boomers/gen x'ers in chicagoland that does not exist in all cities

or at least, not to that extent

i have no idea but that loser got on my last nerve

there's a sort of contentedness that midwestern boomer dudes have that is very specific and singular. it's this sort of "I am the incumbent mayor of life" manner you get from certain types as they rumble around the streets of Schaumburg.

Ramble Tamble is the bomb

This shit just won't go away. When do I reach a point of wizened, content old age and cease to be a frustrated middle aged dude?

idk, when you find out, let us know plz

The main 'life lesson' that you learn as you get older is "you can't get one-up on life" - i.e. you don't ever arrive at a fixed position where you can say I now have a stable and content frame of mind from which now onwards I'll deal with life. Everything changes over time.

(/Aimless mode)

totally got one-upon life atm but I'm very wary of the other boot dropping any day now

I thought I was done with my midlife crisis two and a half years ago but noooooooooo. Same midlife, different crisis.

crisES, even

commiserating w/u, q!

i would say it's good to find a way to know yourself physically, via exercise, rest, yoga etc. bodily feelings aren't explained enough. if you are doing the same things looking for a change then maybe reconsider - ime you can't instantly change thoughts etc but you can really change your physical reaction to all these. also if problems seem quite deep you need to start very small to fix them.

realise this sounds faintly sci*ntologist but i am honestly trying to help.

200 dollars buys a higher plateau

my midlife challenge appears to be learning to give less of a fuck about the vast majority of things and more of a fuck about a few key things. Easier said than done, as it turns out.

The main 'life lesson' that you learn as you get older is "you can't get one-up on life" - i.e. you don't ever arrive at a fixed position where you can say I now have a stable and content frame of mind from which now onwards I'll deal with life. Everything changes over time.

This is OTM. All through my twenties I had some notion that I would finally arrive; that there'd be some point in my life where I'd have everything all worked out and there'd be some blissful karmic balance in everything I'd achieved in relation to where I'd be. But that's not how life works and in a way, I wouldn't want it to be.

i turn 50 in two months. What I find striking is just how ephemeral and elusive "life" - in whatever way you want to interpret it with whatever philosophical tools you prefer - actually is. You'll never have it all worked out because it's all a moving target. Stay static for too long and eventually you'll notice that the world around you will turn into something you're not used to.