I turn 39 in a week, and I might be hitting something like a mid-life crisis. Though I'm successful by many metrics, there's so much I wanted to do by this point in my life that I've been feeling like a failure. For instance, there's been this side project that I first got the idea for in 2014 and have been actively working on since 2017, and I still haven't released it yet because I keep going back to the drawing board and overthinking everything. I'm terrified that my body is slowing down and I won't have the energy to see it through.
Never waste a midlife crisis
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Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#62>> Higgs was saying that the artists he admires are people like David Lynch. People who you wouldn’t think there’s an obvious place for them in the world, but they just do their stuff regardless, and a place sort of builds around them.”
As someone who’s definitely nearing or within a MLC, I’m so fed up with this narrative. It’s pure and simple survival bias. Most of the people doing exactly this end up frustrated, poor, forgotten, incapable of recognizing their own narcissistic personality, and surrounded by scattered/broken/dysfunctional relationship. A very tiny minority, despite all that, gets successful, and yet we build entire narrative universes around these few outliers and their survival bias.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it's very hard to imagine them going through one because they've outsourced most critical decisions to their faith. As Jung said, people don't have ideas, ideas have people. It's very easy to obtain meaning by getting in a sense hijacked by a very convincing set of beliefs.
sounds like Jung's idea has you.
Or you could just look out the window and see Jung simply made an objective observation. Facts don't need an authoritative voice to make them any truer.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#64> The options seemed to be: If I went for it, I’d be penniless, and if I didn’t go for it, I’d be bitter. I’d be bitter going forward. Penniless certainly beats bitter. So I made the decision.
Kind of like industry -> PhD decision.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#65This is hustle porn. All of Kleon's books are hustle porn. A lot of, "you just gotta, like, do, man." Not a lot of whatever the hell that means for the millions of folks who exist in the long tail of every creative market, struggling day in and day out to try to escape the doldrums of their day jobs, but never making it. Year after year. YouTube video after YouTube video. New social media site after new social media site. Kleon's (and others like him, one of which I would consider Paul Graham) success is in no small part due to selling you a story that success is attainable.
But it's probably not. Hustle porn makes its bank on you thinking you're going to be the one to beat the odds. You're probably not. You buy the books and t-shirts and the prints and the seminars and you fill the coffers of someone else's success.
You probably don't even really want success. If you play the "and then what?" game on "what would you do if you had what you want?", you'll eventually realize all you want is happiness. Success isn't happiness. There are lots of successful, deeply unhappy people.
Focus on the happiness. You can make a thing. And you can absolutely not sell it. You can make a thing and not even tell anyone about it. If making a thing makes you happy, focus on that. The rest is a distraction, someone else telling you that making the thing isn't enough, that it has to be "successful" before it's "real".
Yes, happiness is easier when you're financially stable. That's not the same thing as the "success" that hustle porn tries to sell. Hustle porn needs you to remain dissatisfied so you keep buying the hustle porn. Do what it takes to be financially stable. It's good if you can make that be your source of happiness, too, but get ready to accept that you probably can't.
Just choose to be happy. How? You just do. You just decide, "I'm going to be happy." And then it happens. It's really fuggin' weird, but it works.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#66I recall my parents both independently confiding to me that the other was going through a midlife crisis and I think what they were actually doing was just trying to define the others behavior as the cause for their own unhappiness. And specifically push me into believing one or the other was the one behaving oddly.
If you’re experiencing a midlife crisis, please be honest and straightforward with your partner, and the other people in your life. You’re feeling the loss of opportunity and possibility, but that doesn’t mean everything about your life is wrong. Your partner may be able to help.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#67I hope I don’t have a midlife crisis. I would view that as somewhat of a failure. I had like 40+ years to figure out what I wanted my life to be like. Feeling the need to change course after so much time would be a little lame.
I think that's the kind of attitude that sometimes leads to the worst midlife crisis. Because you're holding yourself to an extremely high standard: for your life to be perfect in all aspects (by your own judgement) by ~40. Personally I learned to battle mid life crisis with a dose of humility (I haven't figured it all out, and that's exciting) and humor.
I'm not expecting perfection. But I am treating my life a lot like navigating in a sailboat. You have to have your eye on the horizon and use the stars the guide you. You can't always reach your destination in a straight line, but you also shouldn't be way off course.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#68I turn 39 in a week, and I might be hitting something like a mid-life crisis. Though I'm successful by many metrics, there's so much I wanted to do by this point in my life that I've been feeling like a failure. For instance, there's been this side project that I first got the idea for in 2014 and have been actively working on since 2017, and I still haven't released it yet because I keep going back to the drawing bo…
Welcome to the club!
A lot of all this comes from the highly unrealistic expectations that we set for ourselves that make us incapable of appreciating how much we actually achieved and how much we already got.
Now, knowing that’s the source of the discomfort is great. Actually being able to live with it and let it go it’s totally a different story.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#69This is hustle porn. All of Kleon's books are hustle porn. A lot of, "you just gotta, like, do, man." Not a lot of whatever the hell that means for the millions of folks who exist in the long tail of every creative market, struggling day in and day out to try to escape the doldrums of their day jobs, but never making it. Year after year. YouTube video after YouTube video. New social media site after new social media…
Thanks for saying this out loud.
Re: Never waste a midlife crisis
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
My decision making has largely been driven by looking at those older than me and asking myself if that’s the type of life I want to live. If the answer is yes, then I use those people as role models. So I think my optimization strategy has been on a longer time horizon than just what I want in my 20s or 30s.
Did you ask those people whether they have the same desires in their old age as they did when they were younger? EDIT: my question comes across as combative and snarky. I honestly hope your strategy works out. Just for me the life I now enjoy in my 40s is not one I ever thought I'd want and it was a rough fews years getting over that.
I didn't take it as snarky. I could write a long essay on how I've used the experiences of those older than me to make decisions, but I'll spare you the diatribe. One strategy, though, is to ask people about their experiences. Do you mind sharing what was rough about those years in your 40s?