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Never waste a midlife crisis

austinkleon.com

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Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#341

Post by darkclouds »

dmje wrote: post #233

My midlife crisis at 40 was more like a midlife epiphany. We moved from a perfectly good and totally beautiful city (Bath, UK) into the arse end of nowhere in Devon to live in a shack in the woods with no running water and to be near the sea. We went with two small (8 and 5) kids (responding to those here saying it's not possible - it is!) and downsized from a busy city life to a quiet rural one. Our intention was to…

> Right. I'm off for a surf :-)

What beach, you must be on a foamie considering todays conditions?

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#342

Post by [deleted] »

WXLCKNO wrote: post #140
hirvi74 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next. Oddly enough, I think this is what keeps me from being ambitious in a professional sense. I just feel like, based on everything I read, hear, and see, that we are all just donkeys chasing the metaphorical carrot tied to a stick. I swear, it's like the hedonistic treadmill is turned up a few notches too…

I "made it" (financially set for life) in the past two years after selling my company at 33. I was chasing something like it since I was maybe 15, tired of having grown up poor and wanting better for my family and myself. I'm still not happy but at least I know I'd rather have money and be sad than also being worried about money on top of that. I definitely need to get back some semblance of meaning in my life, but a…

[deleted]

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#343

Post by jncfhnb »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #325
rootusrootus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?

isn't a midlife crisis is just a label for burnout / depression at the end of the day? everybody who is depressed feels like life is stuck and going nowhere.

A midlife crisis implies, imo, that you haven’t reached the things you wanted to and are running out of time. Not that you aren’t moving forward per se.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#344

Post by mattgreenrocks »

hackly wrote: post #202
xboxnolifes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think most kids would prefer a happy in-their-life, less successful, dad, over a bitter, never-in-their-life, career professional.

Yes, but just as they’d prefer playing video games over reading books. Might have been absent from their life at times, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate the properties and stocks I’ll leave behind for them.

This is a bit of a meme recently: “I am not a workaholic, I’m creating generational wealth!”

I can’t say for sure from here, but beware of this idea floating around in the zeitgeist.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#345

Post by chasd00 »

NovaDudely wrote: post #187
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the term is so diluted as to be meaningless. Burnout isn't a mid-life crisis. Changing your career doesn't necessarily mean you're having a mid-life crisis. Changing your personal circumstances doesn't necessarily imply a midlife crisis. Every definition I know of includes a sense of existential angst, a feeling of regret, of lost potential, of questioning identity, of a fear of mortality. But simply realizing yo…

The lost potential is a key one I have seen. The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do.

> The idea that your youth is in the rear view mirror and that you didn't do all the things you thought you would do.

Youth is wasted on the young. It’s such a shame.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#346

Post by Clubber »

heyoni wrote: post #179
Clubber wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that life ain’t that great unless we’re out there crushing it all the time. Where in the hell did you get that from? I wish I hadn't wasted 20+ years of my youth working so hard. >I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either. Dunno where you got that from either. My kids are the best thing that happened to me. Are you projecting or something?

Seriously? > all the time you spent improving yourself and building wealth will be for naught, at least for you There’s meaning in that work if you accept that it’ll have lasting effects beyond you. > It means you'll never be 18 or 23 or 30 or 35 again. The youth that you took for granted is gone forever and time will march with you until your death Your youth was taken for granted if you don’t think it added up to y…

>There’s meaning in that work if you accept that it’ll have lasting effects beyond you.

Read what I said, "it will all be for naught, at least for you." Meaning all that time spent learning things and gaining knowledge and wealth won't matter for you because you'll be 6 feet under. It's along the lines of Jobs' quote, "you'll be the richest man in the cemetery." He was 56 when he died, how many years until you are 56? Probably not as many as you'd like.

>I’m just trying to find meaning in the mundane, not trying to preach. This view that being alive and healthy and able to raise a family isn’t enough is always disheartening.

I dunno where you got that from what I said. It's enough, it's great, it will be all over real soon because of the march of time. It's all for naught because we'll be worm food.

You completely misinterpreted what I said, you pretty much came up with the opposite.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#347

Post by xyzelement »

verbify wrote: post #32
xyzelement wrote: post #2

I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady. Thinking to my religious friends who have 5+ kids, a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community, it's very hard to imagine them going through one. Because they are too busy, but mainly because their life is oriented from the get-go around what is very meaningful to them

I grew up as an ultra orthodox Jew - where people have 5+ kids and there is a lot of focus on religious life and community. There are plenty of extremely bitter people who might love their kids but feel trapped by the lifestyle (they don't want to leave their kids, spouse but it gives them no space for anything else). And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.

I am somewhat familiar with Orthodox Jews, though probably a different area than what you grew up with.

I think what's been lost in places is that living an outwardly religious life is one thing[0], while being deeply religious inwardly is the next level. The second thing is harder to teach or even talk about so it gets ignored, vs ritual etc.

It's maybe the same as the difference between "dragging yourself to the gym"[0] and "loving fitness."

//And many of them struggle with meaning in life - the community, religion and kids don't solve that.

This seems like the crux of the difference between deep and superficial engagement with religion. In my experience, a deeply religious person (of any religion) sees a profound amount of connectivity and meaning in everything in the universe, and sees their family and community life in the context of contributing to that meaning. The statement you made is analogous to me to "working out doesn't make you fitter" - it puts a big question mark around the exercise you're doing.

[0] While obviously connecting deeply is the goal, there's a lot of benefit to even the less deep engagement. Your friends whom you describe as bitter - you can imagine that the secular society is full of bitterness too, plus no community or kids. Likewise, even if you "drag yourself to the gym" you're way ahead of those who don't, even though you may hate it.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#348

Post by soligern »

sph wrote: post #328
soligern wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting help from mental health professionals is just a way for that individual to foist their opinions onto you. Psychology is a highly subjective field whose studies have startlingly low reproducibility. You’re much better off finding someone in your circle that’s willing to listen to you and shares your values (though not everyone might have this available to them).

This, and the sibling replies are utter bollocks. I might be the only person on earth that got something out of therapy, and I blame being and staying depressed my entire adult life because I listened to idiots like you. And trust me, I'm restraining myself here. We have a mental health crisis, a broken support system, male suicide at a all-time high, and your opinion is still mainstream. Shut up and listen. -- Advic…

We’re not idiots, just people with communities and appropriate support structures in place that people like you threw out the window on the altar of individualism and shortsightedness. Modern therapists turn around and attack the same ideas that enable people to have and maintain those communities and structures in the first place while leading broken lives and peddling their sorry wares to other broken people they put there in the first place. You really think an institution that has been around for 60 odd years can compare to a stable equilibrium human society settled on for thousands of years? You really think your psychologist who listens to your minutia while “chasing a career” and having her kids raised by some people at a daycare really knows what she’s talking about? She’s just unwittingly making future clients.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#349

Post by dainiusse »

rootusrootus wrote: post #48
sph wrote: post #27

Good advice, from a 36 year old middle aged man 3 years into a midlife crisis after a massive work-related burnout event. A couple more pieces of advice from me: * A midlife crisis has its own glacial pace. Be prepared to be upside down for a long time. * Be prepared not to be the same person you were before. Be prepared to learn there is no turning back. * If you're in a midlife crisis, your previous life was simply…

> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?

Yep. Sounds like this was just a burnout :) The real midlife crisis will happen later :)

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#350

Post by xyzelement »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #161
xyzelement wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being vulnerable (to the the extent that you were being) with this post. My two cents, I deeply agree that "everything has a cost" but I don't find that most unambitious people make a conscious trade off. Most unambitious people I know aren't doing anything with the time and energy they are "saving". They are just kinda passing/wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply. That's different than s…

> They are just kinda passing\wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply. This notion that you should be grinding for some sort of passion or satisfaction isn't as real as people make it out to be. Some of the most depressed, broken people you meet are highly passionate professionals, celebrities, and artists who found deep satisfaction in their jobs. When it comes down to it, mental health things are more c…

I think you and I agree (I am the person you're responding to)

The guy you mentioned who's busy raising his kids is doing the most important and meaningful work he can possibly be doing. It doesn't have to be a grind to be meaningful. It just needs to be meaningful...

This isn't the same as the archetype I referred to in my post - a guy who's not ambitious but also is not doing anything meaningful or enjoyable with his time and energy (which is very different from your friend)

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