Never waste a midlife crisis | Hacker News Reader

Never waste a midlife crisis

austinkleon.com

445 pointsherbertl437 comments

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 not good enough and reality has caught up to you. Go through the process, and you'll become a better person.

* Outsource your mental health during this phase to professionals. Not even your spouse might be able to accept what comes out of this reconfiguration of yours. You will probably need the help of someone that is not invested in your previous existence to hold you in this trying time.

3 years in, it's getting better, I miss part of my previous life, but I know who I am now, how I operate, and I won't compromise to fit someone else's mould anymore. In your childhood you had no say in how you were grown and pieced together. You had to carry whatever they had built for you until you broke down. Now is your chance to start over and do a better job at it.

Good luck!

How close to Breaking Bad has it gotten?

On a scale from Walter White to Willy Wonka, how WW are you?

Less like Breaking Bad and more that like meme of Pablo Escobar waiting in a melancholic mood.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pablo-escobar-waiting

I have had a couple sabbaticals, and that is me around day 12.

Pryce and his new yellow Hummer

Happiness was painting flames on my family saloon car all along.

Shaka, when the walls fell.

> 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?

It was being a little cheeky. And if a massive burnout whose first month was having daily panic attacks and 3 years to recover is garden variety, I am afraid to know what a serious one entails ;)

Depression was part of the baggage I was carrying around all my life. It's hard to say, given the state of things, but perhaps depression is one thing I was lucky to shed during this phase.

What exactly is a panic attack? Like your just watching TV and suddenly convinced you'll die? Or was it like at work, something woukd happen and you freak out?

I'll attempt an answer: it's your flight-or-flight response kicking in, without any obvious reason for it to do so. Oxygen intake goes up, muscles tense up, adrenaline production kicks in, but there's nothing for your body to "spend" these physiological changes on (like running for your life), so it just sloshes around causing panic attack symptoms (eg sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, detachment, fear of dying).

I’ve been walking around thinking I’ve never had a panic attack before, but after reading this I think I’ve actually been having them all my life.

Can even include blackouts, muscle spasms, facial/full body paralysis and tingling/pins and needles, and even seizures....

Ask me how I know... /s

> without any obvious reason for it to do so

without any obvious RATIONAL reason for it to do so – sometimes there is an obvious something, or a sequence of somethings, that lead up to the attack, if you trace it back.

Like with a phobia where the fear not being based on rational reasoning doesn't make the reason for the fear reaction any less real.

It feels like when you're on a plane and it suddenly drops due to turbulence without warning. Only you could be anywhere doing anything.

And it just keeps going.

The good news is that you can learn to cope with and ultimately control and suppress panic attacks, as opposed to turbulence drops on an airplane.

The “I’m going to die” variety of panic attack is only one of many. Other people have them when driving on the highway, just stepping outside their door or meeting too many people at the same time.

There’s generally a more direct trigger than watching TV, but sure, see the wrong show, think the slightly wrong thought, notice that little bulge on the left side of your big toe when you’ve propped them up on the table. Take a few more cycles of things you worry about and you’re well and truly in the middle of a panic attack (which is as described in another comment).

The nasty part is that it’s hard to recognize as such when you’re in the middle of it.

> The nasty part is that it’s hard to recognize as such when you’re in the middle of it.

Oh yes. The first time it happened to me, I asked my wife to drive me to the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack.

Turns out it wasn’t and the doc reassured me by saying me that half the heart attack suspicions they got in emergencies were in fact panic attacks. So it’s something as common as it is frightening.

It happened a second time but I finally managed to recognize what it was. This one was really random, I was effectively just watching TV ^^

In my twenties I had some years of severe panic attacks. It is funny, it completely dominated my life but I totally forgotten about it. Feel writing it off my chest, maybe it can help somebody.

For me they were hypochondria related. My vision would turn black, my heart would start racing and I got the feeling that ants where crawling from my heart to my arm. At these moments I was convinced I was dying of a heart attack or some artery was torn from my heart. Doctors would find nothing wrong with me, this increased my fear because it meant I couldn't receive any help. They attacks could last for hours, making me unable to sleep and mentally depleting me.

I have actually been close to death a couple of times for real. Once falling through the ice and once having a rare disease. These moments did not feel the same. Actually I was rather calm in these moments.

They attacks made such an impact on me that after a while I started being mortally afraid of having a panic attack. Thinking about it, thinking about my body, feeling the slightest discomfort in my body all these things would trigger another attack. Because of that I lost touch with my body. Worse thing was that I would sometimes wake up in the middle of an attack. This made me afraid of falling asleep. I would walk or cycle at night because I was too afraid to sleep. This made things much worse.

At one point I mentally saw the vicious circle I created for my self. I remember seeing it as one of those smoke circles some people make while smoking. I saw that my focus on this was what kept that circle alive. I saw that I simply had to stop identifying with it, step away from it. Almost magically the attacks have never returned.

Unfortunately it can have the same symptoms as a real heart attack or stroke. Tightness and pain in the chest. A feeling of dizziness. Visual things like not being able to focus or darkness around the edges. For me the most pronounced thing is a crawling sensation under the skin of my head and down my face and the weird feeling that something is sticking out the side of my head. And yea, the intrusive thought that you're going to die, which your brain seems to rationalize with a bunch of stupid reasons.

You can also hyperventilate and not really notice it in your breathing. That makes your hands curl up by themselves and then pins and needles. I only got that once, after that I learnt some breathing exercises.

Panic attack is very hard to describe, but has a unique symptom: the feeling of impending doom.

Everything about you is telling you something is very fucking wrong right now and you're about to perish. Your survival instinct kicks in, fight or flight, heart races, chest feels tight, tunnel vision, you sweat and hyperventilate. You basically are having the sensation of a heart attack or something equally catastrophic, but nothing is actually going on.

It is the most terrifying thing that can happen to you. The first 5 times are hell, then you learn that it tends to be relatively short lived, even if it feels like eternity. What I do is take my phone out and look at the time. Come hell or high water, in 20 minutes I will be fine. Relief often is sudden, but there's times you stay in a state of sub-panic for longer than that.

Truth be told, full blown panic attacks are, even for a very anxious person as I was, rare (and twice so unbearable I called emergency services), the vast majority I call anxiety attacks which are a little milder version of oh fuck I'm going to die now.

I think Panic Attack is overused just to mean someone is uncomfortable with a situation they're in or they're hyperventilating, but I think I had one several years ago but I'm open to being corrected.

I was driving from LA to OC every day which is probably 3+ hours of driving normally working for a client that was an absolute ass. I was working 9 "real" hours a day meaning I didn't even have time to click around on the internet like most jobs I've had since. I was having issues with my prostate hurting in my mid-20s (turns out it was a lifting belt for squats) and I had just moved to a new city.

After 9 months, I was about halfway home where my prostate started hurting again and I just got tunnel vision where I couldn't see ANYTHING. It looked like I could only see a pin of light in each of my eyes and my ears felt like they were under water. I was in the left lane and I couldn't see for shit so I just said a quick prayer and swerved 3 lanes over to the shoulder when I promptly passed out and came to about 5-10 minutes later. I found a new job a month later and said fuck it to driving that much ever again.

I should say that this has only happened once and that I'm very very happy and confident with my life 99% of the time. I've never experienced anything like this before or after and I assume it was a panic attack.

For people who are curious about my prostate problems, I went to several urologists and no one could find anything after several uncomfortable examinations. I decided to try to scientific method and finally removed my lifting belt from use for a few weeks and the pain has been gone since. I figured it was related to my pelvic floor muscles and how they bunched up during a really tight belt/squat session doing pretty heavy weights (365-405) pretty frequently.

I remember that a few years ago, after a few months during which I dabbled in street cocaine (which may not actually have been cocaine for all I know), I started to have occasional panic attacks. I then stopped doing that nasty stuff and would not do it again for many reasons, the danger of fentanyl being one of them, but I kept drinking alcohol regularly and continued to have occasional panic attacks. Even though I continued to drink alcohol, the panic attacks stopped happening when I started to take vitamin supplements daily: B1/thiamine, B complex, magnesium, calcium, niacin, and D. Most likely, panic attacks can also be caused by pure psychological factors, but I just want to leave this information here because it might help someone who is experiencing panic attacks. Of course, I am not a medical professional, so take this information for what it's worth, which might not be much.

I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old, and most were out of the funk 2-3 years following.

Most are doing well now as we hit 40, curios if is struck sooner for our generation.

> I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return

e: downvote all you want but people wouldn't have attempted to find meaning for something like this if they hadn't experienced it first

I think people are down voting because Astrology but yeah it just seems like the coming to terms with reality of adulthood. Midlife crisis is later.

That might be a "quarter-life crisis" not a mid-life crisis. Mid-life crises are usually 45-50.

The American Psychological Association considers middle age to begin at 35.

That's great, but the crisis in question happened before 35. The psychology of quarter-life and mid-life crises is also very different.

This is similar to my experience (mid 30s now). I remember sitting at my desk at work, staring out of the window, thinking "wow..so this is it". Would've been about 28-29. I think a combination of things got me to that headspace: end of the education-career pipeline, having bought and settled into a house, and having no kids. I reached a point where I was no longer occupied with achieving "my" goals, and I was left to figure out what my life was going to be. I guess suddenly becoming aware of that responsibility isn't very pleasant; before, I was just on the rails society lays out. School, job, marriage, house, kids, career, etc. Easy.

I'm not much interested in the pedantic debate taking place elsewhere in here about what truly qualifies as an x-life crisis. To me, it's a point in your life where there's some anxiety associated with the direction of your life. I'm more interested in how people came to think about their lives in and after those moments.

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd was 28-29 when “he realised he was no longer preparing for anything in life, but was right in the middle of it” and was inspired to write the song Time for Dark Side of the Moon (the reader is encouraged to listen to it now). Each individual responds to this realization in their own way.

"No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."

Tame Impala's Currents is an album written around the same age with a similar theme in mind, and fittingly part of the new guard of psych rock/psychedelia.

I'm sorry to say I don't think it's struck yet! Not to say what you experienced wasn't real by any means, but I think it just sounds more like a different, but normal thing. The coming to terms with reality after your 20s. I think you'll see another round more characteristic of the mid-life crisis as you all enter your 50s.

If he lives in the US, it's pretty close. The life expectancy of a male in the US is 73.5 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

Middle age is generally not defined as 50% of your life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age

Yes.

It should perhaps better be described as a mid-life-expectancy crisis.

Speaking as a guy in his mid 30s referring to that article, yeah I'm middle aged.

Physical? I can feel and am acutely aware I just can't do what I could 20 or even 10 years ago. No more all-nighters for me, my body just can't take it. No more high speed action games for me, my body just can't respond fast enough.

Mental? My memory is noticably declining, and my ability to learn new things is significantly deteriorated from my prime. I find myself clinging to stuff I already knew because they give me some sense of familiarity and safety in an increasingly alien world.

Social? I've stopped bothering to actively make new friends or otherwise socialize, I just can't be bothered anymore with all the hassle that human relations entail.

If I were to describe my current phase in life as the four seasons, I'm in autumn.

I was thinking about the learning part, as I’m investing a lot of part learning the phoenix/elixir ecosystem. On the one hand I feel it may be going slower than before, but I’m not sure if it’s because some mental decline or I just know a lot more now and every time I learn some new mechanism I run through a bunch of scenarios in my head from previous experience and have to integrate it with existing knowledge to make it stick.

I can no longer just learn the syntax for how the pubsub works, I have to stop and think how to build an architecture around it, how to create an abstraction for my use case, can it be integrated with Postgres triggers etc.

This hits hard. In my 20s I was athletic, smart, and ran like a gazelle. Between my general inactivity and irregular heartbeat in my late 30s, I could probably run a hundred yards before collapsing. It's sad, because I often have dreams of running fast without getting winded, to this day.

I get frustrated nearly daily at my mental decline. I was always a math wiz who could basically do up to precalc in my head. Today, I have trouble carrying numbers doing basic long multiplication. Worse, I have trouble finding the words I'm looking for when writing.

Autumn feels optimistic. I don't know what the future holds, and maybe I'm being dramatic, but it feels like Winter. I feel like my body and mind greatly betrayed me in my 30s.

I’m right there with you. I feel a bit paranoid because I can feel the decline in real time. It’s just little things, but they add up. The advice is, “this is just getting older.” Perhaps true, but I don’t like it.

> The life expectancy of a male in the US is 73.5 years.

But 40 is when the warranty expires.

I'm not the person you're responding to, but both my parents passed away in their mid-50s, and after my startup failed at 35 I hit something like a midlife crisis.

If you believe mid 30s is middle-aged, then it becomes middle-aged - and unfortunately, for some that might be true.

Fortunately for me, this crisis led to a serious investment in my health and fitness, and though I obviously cannot predict my future, I'm far healthier now than anytime in my adult life. I fully agree with the sentiment to not waste a midlife crisis.

I’m 35 and I feel like I’m just getting properly started.

"Categorical age", if you'll allow me to coin a term for this phenomenon (infancy, childhood, adolescence, middle age, ... - your conception may vary) is more or less a qualification of our personal relationship to time and mortality. So while we might have broad consensus that a 5 year old is a child and a 70 year old is a senior, it's not determined by numerical age. Just a near 1 correlation.

After all, we never know our numerical middle age except in retrospect.

The term is not used so literally.

Yeah, I'm 49 and wondering if I shouldn't have a midlife crisis or something. Although reading the article, is it possible I had mine 12 years ago when I quit employment and became a freelancer? I've been a lot happier since, but it's really still the same career.

I've always wanted to create games, though. Whether computer, board or RPG. Should I quit my current freelancing and start doing that then?

I'm 43 now and became a freelancer at 38.

I always wanted to write sophisticated game books (think choose-your-own-adventure, but with real impact of your choices for a real story). I wrote a small one to learn about how I feel in the process.

And that would be my suggestion. Try the process for some time. Something between one month and half a year. See if you like it, if you get into it, if feel like you want to continue this. The question to answer is: does the daily process of creating games makes you happy and feels right?

Someone has no idea about the actual average lifespan of men....

> 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely?

I don't think he knows about second midlife crisis, Pippin.

Where's that Simpsons meme when you need it?

"This midlife crisis is the worst!"

"Now now...this midlife crisis is the worst you've had, so far!"

I guess it depends on how people see their mortality. I know people who thought they'd die for sure before they hit 30.

For myself 30s was only when the life started to happen.

Funny. For me it's when it ended. And while expected lifespan is some 80+ these days, I can't help but see expected useful life span to top out at 60-ish...

I expect you will probably redefine useful by the time you hit 60, or is it actually your belief that senior citizens are useless?

Probably. Note: this is not a rational belief, just an emotion. I feel that for me, my useful lifespan ends at around 60, meaning I have less than half of that to look forward to (and all of that on a downward quality slope). Objectively, I understand that there are important roles for senior citizens, and I do enjoy the company and services provided by many of such people. Just that trying to imagine myself getting to that age fills me with despair.

No age is too early for a crisis. One model I have heard is that we need to reinvent ourselves every 7 to 10 years. I had one crisis of reinvention at 30. Now at 38 I am in another one.

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.

yes, but practically speaking (and also from painful personal experience) this just seems like semantics. it boils down to the same issues. it's just that the person connects those feelings with age. but then again - no depressed person ever felt young - not even those who are objectively young. even at 20 i felt old. i knew i wasn't old in a general sense but i felt old relative to what ever i thought should have been at that age. same with midlife crisis. luckily i discovered that pattern and i'm getting better at dealing with it.

Burnout and depression can be connected to, but aren't the same thing as a mid-life crisis.

I would distinguish a mid-life crisis (or in the positive case, mid-life inspiration) by the realisation that you don't have infinite time left to do everything you dream to do.

In your 20s, it's easy to think that your entire life is still ahead of you, and you will have time for everything. It doesn't matter if you spend a few years in a mediocre relationship, a career that won't work out in the long run, on a terrible startup idea, and so on.

Somewhere in your 30s you realise that you do need to get started on what you really dream to do, or you might never have the chance to. Whether it's a crisis or inspiration depends on how far off your previous life was from it.

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

38 yo male now starting to think I don’t know what a midlife crisis is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlife_crisis

"Studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others; one study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a mid-life crisis is mainly a cultural construct."

I thought this was interesting.

Japanese salarymen often undergo a crisis when they retire and suddenly find themselves with tons of time and nothing to do. Not exactly midlife, but it's of a similar vein.

That’s when they go into politics.

You might like this article about penis stealing witches:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-geogra...

And this one:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-crazy-like...

A midlife crisis is quitting your desk job to sell ice creams on the beach in the Caribbean. Getting to the point of doing it, not just thinking about it.

I thought it is dumping wife of 20 years for silly blonde and driving red convertible one bought with use of shark loan because “you need to have it because you always wanted it” even if you couldn’t afford it.

It's the same thing. But it doesn't have to be as destructive or ultimately short-lived as that. It might an opportunity to radically change some things you have taken for granted your entire life.

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 you're unhappy in your life or circumstances and want to change them isn't itself indicative of a mid-life crisis by any meaningful definition I'm aware of.

Yeah I think everything in your comment is pretty understandable and I probably wouldn’t trust someone who claims to have not experienced nearly all of those feelings to some extent.

Hadn’t heard that list of “symptoms” before but… I guess that means I am in a midlife crisis at 39.

I think it’s when those feelings completely break you that you’re in the crisis stage.

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.

I was in my 40s and starting thinking more in terms of how much time I had left rather than what I wanted to do at some unspecified "later". I also had young kids and a depressed jobless wife, so I wasn't completely free to do what I wanted and felt trapped. Then my father died pretty young, from a cruel cancer, and that amplified it all.

> 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.

> 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.

Oh, then that one started for me around 30. I've successfully managed to bottle up those thoughts for now, which is probably why I'm facing a mother of all burnouts right now.

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. Death may be maybe be 2 years from now or 40 years from now, fully knowing that you body will start failing. Even if you have 40 years, not all of them will be good years, especially the last ones. Once you are gone, that's it, all the time you spent improving yourself and building wealth will be for naught, at least for you.

So, not for naught? Seriously, we’re social creatures that live for others. You can have 40 good years serving the next generation, building wealth for them and sharing in their joys.

I’m sensing this strange notion in older generations where they absolutely refuse to let go and insist on keeping their youth and the spotlight to no or some avail. Technology is getting better and making people hold on for longer but I think it leads to your kind of statement that life ain’t that great unless we’re out there crushing it all the time.

I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either.

>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 you being able to provide for a family.

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.

Anyways, that’s my interpretatio. Or projection.

>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.

Funnily enough this is a sentiment Ted Kaczynski pushed in his manifesto. That technology has replaced the drive for power in individuals to support themselves, because it has become so easy, so people try to find other means to fill the power principal. This can be social causes or political ones, or in your example, trying to hold onto youth for as long as possible. To be in denial of the reality of themselves.

There is some truth to it but I also feel like it is a far too pessimistic take on the issue.

I’ve got parents on both sides that are too busy going on cruises and vacations and only call us for the good times, so yea I can be pessimistic these days.

Friends and siblings though have been coming through like champs during these hard times.

>Seriously, we’re social creatures that live for others. You can have 40 good years serving the next generation, building wealth for them and sharing in their joys.

Speak for yourself; I sincerely have no interest in deliberately serving humanity. We're by far the dumbest and most conceited lifeform on this planet, and even ignoring that I find serious interactions with humans to be an utter hellscape of drama and problems I can and will do without.

When I'm gone, that's it. My blood ends with me. I refuse to leave a legacy behind. If there's anything left, whoever is there to witness can pick it all apart as they please. I don't care because I'm dead, after all.

> building wealth for them

Maybe not the best idea if you mean material wealth beyond staving off being poor. I know its all good intentions, but it more often ends up in spoiled entitled brats than it doesn't. People simply need a bit of struggle to stay humble and nice human beings, not too much but sweeping the road ahead of kids too well is one of the worst things a parent can do.

But its true this is US forum, so in that case one needs to build massive wealth just to send kids to university or have safety net for any kind of bigger health issues in family.

I agree though with kids being great for such a crisis, they give more purpose in life than anything else, give depth to otherwise often rather shallow life. Its like a computer game, playing on easiest difficulty (no kids) will make you progress faster and easier, but that doesn't translate well into overall worthiness of experience. Plus seeing your little ones play, having fun at 100% or grokking new stuff is such a nice heartwarming experience that it could melt a glacier or two, good luck getting such a kick elsewhere (and I do quite a bit of extreme sports so can compare a bit).

It's what people say they suffer when they made bad decisions for decades and figured out they missed the good part(s), happens a lot to people who sacrifice everything to climb the corporate ladder or focus too much on work or other artificial goals. Not everyone goes through it

May I ask for further advice on your fourth bullet point about “outsourcing your mental health”? I understand you might need to shop around like you maybe go to a cognitive-behavioral therapist, or psychoanalyst, or buy a Transcendental Meditation (TM) course.

>or buy a Transcendental Meditation (TM) course.

That's a cult, so maybe some other kind.

Talk therapy with a psychotherapist. The ones that listen and don't do much talking, not the ones that prescribe (which are called psychiatrists).

If all else fails, M-x doctor. It's a thing.

Thank you so much for sharing. This makes a lot of sense right now.

Literally as if I'm reading about my own life. Being the same age doesn't help :) Well put.

Wow, 3 years, that's a long way. Congratz on making it this far and good luck on the road still ahead.

39yo here, just stopped shy of a full burn-out & after a month with a lot of confusion, crying and panic decided to hand in my notice. That helped a lot, but I'm not really well yet ~3 months in. Mainly sleep is an issue. My body seems to enjoy triggering tiny panic attacks when I'm falling asleep, which makes falling a sleep complicated >_<

I've been struggeling with sleep and anger issues for many years now, but it had come to a point where I did not want to accept being angry anymore. Anger turned into crying and despair, but that is frankly progress. I got some help, it was not great, but it helped me understand a lot about myself. In the end, this gave me the courage to quit and think about life in a different way.

Now I just have to figure out where to go from here. Stick with what I know and do it better or do something different entirely. Not a clue how to figure that one out yet.

Anyway, thank you for sharing. It's good hearing from other people that went through similar things.

I'm 41 and in the same place. It's been 2 months since I quit and frankly the decision was a bit of relief. Thanks for sharing and hang in there.

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 stay a year. After two years we mentioned going back to the kids and they put their feet down - the most relaxed kids in the world decided they knew what was good for them: splashing about in rivers with sticks, fires on the beach, mud, a tiny school, more present parents, late nights lying on a hill looking at the stars. So we listened to them and stayed.

We're still in the country, by the sea, and our kids are now nearly grown up. We're having a blast. We're here for them. They're here for us. We'll never be rich but we're a great family unit.

If we hadn't had the guts to do a crazy thing (I give all credit to my wife for having the idea!) and decide pretty much off the cuff to follow our "crisis", we'd never have discovered our new life.

We've been very fortunate with our circumstances and I never forget that - but fundamental to all of this has been making the leap. Fear of the unknown can be countered by just doing it, knowing that crazy looking decisions can create amazing futures. Doing things is often better than curling up in fear and not doing them.

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

Can I ask what are you and your wife working with now?

Yeh, we run a small web consultancy. I also have another business which is a little more platform-y / SaaSy. Wife has also learned how to be a florist so is building that up too. All fun stuff :-)

I mean good for you. Both my boys (2 and 4) are social butterflies, if they had only each other they’d probably go crazy.

We just did the lightweight version of that, moved from a major city to the beach, but still in a beach town. It came about due to my wife’s midlife crisis induced by major (now solved) health problems. We’ve lived at the beach for three weeks and already it feels like our best decision in many years.

(We kept our old jobs and are working mostly remotely. The commute is two hours each direction by train, but doing that once a week is fine by me.)

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

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

Yeh, it's awful, I ended up just having a little dip instead :-)

A couple questions if you're willing to indulge:

- What about friends and family? Are you further from or closer to family? Did you have friends nearby? Did your kids? What is your familial and social circle now, compared with then? - What about school?

Sure - well, my wife is from the North East so her parents are problematic from a travel point of view, and definitely worse now given that we don't have easy access to trains / airports now. We've mitigated this by having them come to stay for longer periods of time so it's good that I get on with them :-)

We didn't have any friends at all down here when we first moved. The village was extremely welcoming, and in large part (as ever) the kids going to (a small and friendly) school massively helped to build some initial connections, many of which continue to this day.

We now have a really nice circle - people round these parts are very much not obsessed with work in the way we've found with other places we've lived, which is a bonus for us. Lots of variety in what people do with their leisure time, lots of home workers, and in general people seem more relaxed.

Massive downside about our particular part of the world is the terrible lack of diversity. We also miss bits of city culture and have to travel now to go get our culture / food / music - but we find we can sort of "top up" on a monthly basis and then run back to the sea feeling refreshed :-)

I appreciated this response yesterday but had nothing to add so just gave it an upvote, but now I'm feeling like from your perspective I asked you for something and then ignored you :) So now I've written this comment to say that I appreciated your response!

I guess now that I'm writing something anyway, I'll say this: My conclusion since having kids has been that what we've deprioritized to our detriment is proximity to family, both for the benefits to our kids from spending time with their relatives, and to us from not doing 100% of the child care. The families with young kids that I see working the best are the ones with loving families and friends really close (like walking distance close) who spend lots of time together. I see the kids in those families being close with their grandparents and cousins, and I see the parents in those families spending a lot of time with just each other, as their kids spend time with the other family members. This seems win/win/win to me.

But it's also incompatible with "we just have to get out of town away from the rat race", because we're not independently wealthy enough to be organic farmers or whatever, and that means jobs, and that means living in places where other people live, at least for some members of the family (not everyone does the kind of work that works remotely).

So that's why I asked you the question. I see advantages to what you described, but it seems like it is the opposite of being targeted at what I see as the primary problem of contemporary parenthood, of families living all scattered around instead of near each other.

I appreciate your response to my response :-)

I agree to a certain extent, although I probably don't quite see proximity to family as massively different from proximity to friends. I personally think kids being brought up in "generally loving and supportive" environments in which which they get to hang out with all sorts of groups is actually what's important.

So kids (of course) having other kids to be with - but also being involved in the back and forth of adulthood as well. Kids being at the table when adults are discussing things over dinner, being party to (some) of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, knowing that parents are fallible but supportive - and yes, into this mix comes family too.

What I'd personally describe as the "problem of contemporary parenthood" - as you describe it - is a bit closer to home. I'd say it is families where the parents simply don't have time to spend with their kids - either because they're primarily focused on The Big Career or have been forced by low incomes to work several jobs / work all the time. I see many, many people chasing money for the sake of some future satisfaction / security - and then they look around and their kids have been and gone. Those 18 years go like a flash (as my mother in law says: "when you have kids, the days are long but the years are short"), and our personal intention has always been (to a certain extent!): "screw the future, we're here and now with our kids, let's make the most of that time!". So we could have grown our business, could have taken on staff, could have had big premises, could have gone for bigger and bigger web builds - but we have deliberately chosen not to. Downside: we'll probably never be able to retire! - but I've had the absolute luxury and privilege of seeing my kids grow up, and being there all the way through that journey. There's a parallel world where I am now (at 50) selling my business ready for retirement - but it's a world in which I wouldn't have been present for my family. Would I swap these worlds? Never, not in a million years.

The childcare aspect is definitely a thing, and we have probably suffered - definitely financially (at least for a while while we decided to live off one salary in order to make the childcare logistics easier^) - but again, friends have been amazing, groups like the NCT, close connections with people in the village, all providing a support network that does all of this and more.

[^ I am very aware that nowadays it just isn't possible for many adults to have only one parent working, we were again lucky given the circumstances at the time that we were able to do this...]

> I'd say it is families where the parents simply don't have time to spend with their kids

I don't think this is quite right. I have seen research on this (sorry don't have a link or anything, so if this is a myth I'd be happy to be corrected) that shows that at least for the like knowledge-worker rat-race type people, we are spending a more time with our kids than people did in the past. I think this reflects more helicoptering the kids around to different activities, and less independent play in the neighborhood and wandering over to the homes of family and friends (because someone would have to drive them). (This is probably a pretty US-centric perspective too.)

I do tend to agree with your point about how friends can be just a kind of supportive extended family. But most people in their 30s with young children don't have friends who are retired and excited to spend time with their kids the way that grandparents are.

If you need another 'kid' (48m) in mid-life-burnout-crisis to join you - I'm your guy!

I have been going through MLC since the beginning of pandemic - and I am trying to figure out what to do as I dont ever want to go back to the type of tech work I was doing (SF currently has the largest commercial real estate vacancy in the country, and I dont see that getting better - and for a decade I built out the tech in many of the large office spaces in SF and for many hospitals...

I cant go back to that.

I want to do something analog/creative and non-tech related.

I grew up in the scenario you describe with your kid - growing up as a latch-key-kid in Lake Tahoe in the 80s was AMAZING - just leaving the front door and walking off into the wilderness and stomping through streams, building tee-pees out of shaking aspens that we would chop down. Build booby traps (terribly)...

Kids need to grow up in the woods - not in the cities.

Bath might be beautiful, but it's definitely not perfectly good!

It's at the same time too small to be interesting (you need to drive an hour to get to Bristol), but too big for having those advantages you mention for Nothing-by-the-Sea.

Midlife crisis needs to be split into the "responsible for kids" and "not" categories. The "not" people can do wilder/riskier things, although I suspect on average they don't since fear of things massively outweighs "can you actually do it" factors. Probably the paper boxes we build are smaller than the metal ones outside of them.

I struggle with this—if you have kids, sometimes staying the course feels like the "responsible" thing to do. But plenty of people get laid off out of the blue, and plenty of people pursue their dream and have a thriving second career.

There is probably no right answer, but I guess the question is: "what decision can you live with?"

That’s tricky though, because the decision you can live with becomes the decision your partner and children also have to live with - and they get much less choice in the matter.

True but if you make a decision that makes you a bitter adult then they have to live with that as well - as a role model for your kids no less. No easy answers unfortunately.

It should enter into the equation for sure. Is the kid better off with a revolving door of abusive "boyfriends" and mother who works three jobs or one bitter dad? Not a pretty picture.

Fulfilment doesn’t feed your children or put a roof over their heads. The expectation is that men provide. The wife and kids would prefer a bitter provider over a happy “deadbeat”.

I don’t disagree, but I think part of it is whether the wife and/or kids are able to spend enough time with their husband/father.

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

Agree - there are other forms of capital and support which are more important to children, spouses, other family members, and friends than money. It seems like many people have already proven that having more money than you need doesn't actually make a difference if your life is broken in other ways.

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.

What makes you so sure? Did you discuss this with your kids, if they’re old enough, or with your friends’ older kids?

As someone with a friend who grew up under a dad like you… no they won’t. They’ll talk a whole lot of shit to someone like me about what an emotionally unavailable parent you were. Sure, they’ll acknowledge the privileged circumstances they grew up in and be grateful that they at least have that going for them, but not a single shred of that gratitude will extend to you or the decisions you made.

Then again, everyone’s different, and maybe your kids will react differently. Just don’t be surprised if you get a shitty relationship with your kids later on.

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.

And your kid will blow that generational wealth because that’s life and wealth rarely lasts more than 3 generations

Generational wealth isn't capital though some fools mistake it for such.

> The expectation is that men provide.

The 60s want their gender roles back.

In my experience, if a man fails at being a provider, he usually fully commits to the failure too. At least this was the case with my family. A healthy in between narcissistic Walter White provider and fully leaving your old life behind would seem healthier.

There is absolutely a happy medium here, is there not? e:g mid-level dev that could have been a senior but would rather work from home, do the school run, be around for kids, gets enough code cranked out for employer to be happy but is a decent , present, Dad too? Kids get less material standard of living than some of their peers, but still good compared to most of the world and most of history.

Actually it’s not. The expectation is that men do their half and also provide emotional support. The problem is that many omen don’t do either of those and few so both well. Instead many men try to compensate with wealth and fail.

You're right, but just to point out the obvious - you can decide (to some extent) not to be bitter, even if you aren't fulfilled at your job.

Many people, in fact most people, and certainly most people throughout history, have worked not because it was the thing they wanted to do to be most fulfilled. They worked because they had to provide for their family.

The choice isn't binary - it's not "do something you love and not be bitter" vs "work to provide and be bitter". You can also choose "work to provide, understand the tradeoff you're making, and accept it". You can still have a plenty fulfilling life outside of your job - many people do.

This is me, I couldn't care less about massive multinational corporation employing me, it could go bankrupt tomorrow for all I care. But there are those annoying bills, mortgages, vacations, hobbies or just saving for retirement. Remove salary and I will stop working for my employer immediately. I am also not breaking my back to have stellar career, paycheck is enough. I did it for 20 years for various employers, can handle doing it for another 20 till (hopefully earlish) retirement.

But am I depressed? Not at all, because all the free time I get (which often included rather long lunch breaks spent ie running or weightlifting) I try to fill with family and my passions (which are not yet fully compatible things so its often either-or). Its mindset (doing work is OK, it doesn't have to be super exciting) and those passions. But it took me half a decade to discover them, most are adrenaline/extreme sports. TBH I don't know that many middle aged people with real fulfilling passions, that may be the source of problems.

On the other hand, very few jobs these days in the West are about survival anymore. It's true to some extent that you need to pay for your mortgage but at the same time the amount of bullshit jobs is staggering. People work for work for organizations that provide the service of allowing others to like photos of your holidays. Very few people are employed in farming these days as opposed to the entertainment industry. I'm not saying that working in the gaming industry is without value but compared to historical data it looks like it's very hard to die of a famine these days.

Yes, happened to me. My ex had a mid life crisis and decided she didn't want to be a mother or wife anymore. She wanted to enjoy life and be free.

Great for her, terrible for everyone else in the family. After that experience, I take these kind of articles with a heavy dose of salt.

They translate loosely into "Be selfish, think only about yourself, live your own life" no matter the consequences.

Thank you. I turned 40 this weekend, and have spent the last few months if not years wondering who the hell I am, and thinking about all the cool projects, startups, languages and learnings I'd love to explore.

However, I also have a 3-year old I'm taking care of who drains me of all my excess time and energy. I can't do any of this stuff. I'm exhausted at the end of the day, and with my 1-2 hours at the end of night after my kid goes to bed, I'm certainly not writing the Great American Novel.

Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

> Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

If you're like me, yes. When I was 40, my daughter was 3, and I didn't have much time for worrying. Now both my kids are tweens and my direct day-to-day responsibilities as a parent have declined so much that I have plenty of time for a proper midlife crisis. It sucks more than I ever imagined, though I'm working through it and feeling a little better about the future.

I'm in your shoes, more or less, and what I panic about is the fact that now that the hands-on time with the tween is so much more optional, I could be missing out on invisible parenting opportunities by not being proactively involved. Example, kid is happy to spend all day drawing or reading or playing BS roblox games with friends. Should I have put more of a limit on this and insisted on a couple of hours a day of other activities like crafts, music instruments, or just hanging out/hooking up playdates? It's a lot easier to be lazy at this age since the kid is not actively trying to do something dangerous like play with scissors or fall into a pool.

"mid-life" is such a varied but also changing term.

Many many moons ago said mid life crisis was when the kids were starting to get older, 16-ish or older even. Mid life crisis meant you suddenly had more time on your hands than you remembered what to do with.

Now mid life crisis is a couple of years into having kids more often than not it seems. That seems like a way different situation. On the one side you have kids that want to do their thing anyway and on the other you have a totally dependent on you and the family toddler.

You're combining empty nest syndrome with midlife crisis. They are two distinct phenomena.

51 with a 2 year old son (my one and only kid, who was technically impossible, hence why he is "late", but then here we are...). He's awesome, but I'm in the same place (2nd paragraph). And, even worse since I'm 51. I have to practically physically claw back any time I need for myself. It's exhausting. I'm hoping to make enough money again by next year where my partner can quit her job and my son can enter a special program (that unfortunately has 51 weekdays off, which was too many for 2 full-time parents), and the division of labor will be different.

That's how I was around 40 (though my children were 6 and 3 at the time). I'm definitely going through a midlife crisis. One thing I've learned about myself in this period (it started last year) is that there is nothing worth losing your own mental health over. If you aren't mentally healthy and stable, those you care about the most are going to suffer all the more for it. Sometimes you have to pick the least of multiple bad options, and often "powering through" is not that.

Yes, you will have more time later. Now is the time to invest as much attention as you can into your child. It is the investment you can make now that will pay off massively later on.

Recommended reading: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375...

You’ll get your time back as he gets older, for sure.

Nice metaphor. I like the paper = financial, social constraint and metal as "down to the metal" physical limitations. Kinda clunky though, needs a few rounds of workshopping!

Midlife crisis needs to be split into “the ones that need to keep working until 70 probably doing the same crap to keep feeling alive” and “not”.

And sometimes the ones from “not” get there without ever knowing what _needing to work_ means.

My wife and I at (46 and 48) went all out 2 years after our younger son graduated and two years after Covid.

TLDR; we downsized from an our house in the burbs and our cars bought a vacation home/investment property in a resort in Florida where we live half the year and we nomad the other half flying across the US.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966

Do you still need to work?

Yep. I work remotely in the cloud consulting department at $BigTech as of mid 2020

Do you have any long term plans? Or do you just want to try it out for a couple of years but eventually get back to a (more) traditional lifestyle? It's fairly common for people to spend winters in Florida and summers in NY or some other place north. What do you think about that?

Current projections is that we should be able to pay off our condo in Florida by the end of 2026. That means it will actually be bringing in income instead of just being cash flow neutral when we aren’t there and we don’t have to be there during the low season - October - early March and May.

Then we can buy a “permanent” home somewhere else. We still haven’t decided where that is. As we travel more we will know. Heck, we might not even retire in the US and keep our place in Orlando.

But since we can keep our living expenses basically level whether we are at home or traveling, there is really no rush.

When you travel and evaluating the area as a potential "permanent" home, what do you pay attention to?

I live in the south, and I sometimes think about eventually buying a property in the north and spending half the time there.

I lived in Atlanta until last year and I still have my house there.

- not too far away from a major airport.

- not too hot in the summer. We don’t care about the winter. We have our winter home

- not too expensive.

- suburbs is okay. But not rural. But we would really like a walkable place. Our condo isn’t in a “walkable” area. But since it is built as a resort hotel, there are three restaurants, a well stocked convenience store, three pools and a gym on site, and a jogging trail.

- a low tax state.

The only city that we have been to that real piqued our interest is Charlotte, NC.

We were there last year for three weeks. But I ended up traveling for work two of those weeks. We are going back next year for three weeks.

We both love Vegas just because there is so much to do and Nevada is state income tax free and the cost of living isn’t high. But it’s hot.

Like I said, there is really no urgency even though I will be 50 next year. We might even end up buying a place in Atlanta again and going back and forth between Atlanta and Orlando.

Exactly - those with kids and/or those who are poor can’t afford a midlife crisis

It reminds me of the kids/no-kids bi-modality of the covid "lock-downs". All the stuff in the news was like "everyone's learning to bake!", while the reality for most people I knew was "everyone is running an office and a daycare simultaneously from their home!".

Normalize transition in your kids lives'. It will serve them so much better in the long run.

I had my own dramatic "mid-life crisis" a few years ago in my early 40's and have two teenage kids (pre-teen at the time).

We didn't hide anything from them, including the overall shape of the career issues, relationship issues, hopes and dreams, how we were handling regrets and commitments, and so on.

Of course we didn't involve them in all the nitty gritty (and what we shared, we do so with respect to their relative ages and levels of experience), but the idea that hiding what it means to be a complete, imperfect and yet aspirationally evolving human being from your kids is a major opportunity lost.

Now my kids know that just being successful doesn't mean you're happy, that everyone goes through changes of heart, that our goals and dreams evolve, and that this is a natural part of life.

I'm a huge fan of parental role modelling through action and reflective practice. Showing them how you go through your own life transitions helps them tremendously in theirs.

I don't think that's what they were talking about. I think they were talking about "if you have kids, you still have to support them financially, and that massively limits your options for experimentation".

Agreed because its not a “midlife crisis” when you’re single, in a trendy area and financially stable, doing something cool.

> The "not" people can do wilder/riskier things

not going to help anyway. midlife crisis and other related mental problems can never be resolved by outward solutions. you can distract yourself for a while with exciting new hobbies (like getting a motorbike) but it will come back and even harder at that because then you will feel like it's even more hopeless as even this exciting change didn't really solve the underlying issue. but some people also just get used to being unhappy and that's about it for them.

The midlife crisis is a need for novelty, specifically the brain is not stupid, it sees that everything around is either collapsing or freezing in place and it wants to fight that, reverting to the days of college when everything was about building up and dynamism.

If and only if you get back to the same levels of building up and dynamism of the college days , and you are still sad/depressed, you could claim that the thing is not outward related.

I don't think people with kids should weaken their midlife crisis. Kids adapt and maybe they'd prefer a more lively parent to a resigned one?

And compared to divorce, a midlife crisis has a lot more upsides.

Yes but the options are far more limited. Your midlife crisis can't be "I only do solitary mountain trekking now because that's what makes me happiest" when you have children who need you.

I turned 40 last year, shortly after “making it” to my career goal: CTO of a hyper-growth start-up.

Shortly after my birthday, my daughter, who had just started middle school, was hospitalized because she was suicidal.

What I believe has been a midlife crisis exploded with such tremendous force, I thought I was losing my mind. Thank goodness for good therapy, which I immediately sought.

This is the most profound reconfiguration I’ve ever experienced.

I’m excited for the person I’ll be at the other end of this, and how my life will feel, but I’ve learned there is no planning for any of this. There is no white-knuckling any of this.

I’m relearning how to connect to myself and how to shape a life around that connection.

It’s not easy. It’s not close to done. It’s exciting. Terrifying.

To the author’s point: I’m not wasting this opportunity. That doesn’t mean I’m writing books or or doing things to keep busy. For me, wasting this opportunity would be ignoring the incredible self-reflection, forgoing the reconnection with self, and powering through the burnout and discomfort to keep on with plans I laid for reasons I’m not sure I fully understand anymore.

There is a peace I’m sensing, and I can’t wait until I’m fully aligned with it.

For those of you experiencing similar, I wish you the best. I think our best years are ahead of us.

If you don't mind sharing, where did you find a therapist, and what is their background? It seems like there is such a wide range of options, and I'm a bit hesitant about the online platforms.

Not OP but I had the same problem as you, too many options. My advice is to just pick one and try it, you'll have a much better understanding of what you need/want after you've talked to one. If they don't give you a good feeling, you pick another one

Also not OP, but if you open up with any mental health positive people in your life, that's a great place to start. They may even have a recommendation which will really ease a lot of your worries going in as it largely is a personality based thing in my experience.

Also - give a call to some therapists. You can choose some arbitrary screening criteria that make you comfortable - like if you only want to talk to men because you're a man and worry about that, or if you want to find an lgbtq-oriented therapist, those types of things can be filtered. There are even faith-adjacent therapists - but I personally would be uncomfortable with that - but they exist!

Once you have a list after filtering down of 3-5 therapists, call each for a consult. During the consult, if you don't like the therapist, cross them out. After calling 3-5 you can choose the one that your gut tells you. If you can't commit even then, then flip a coin on them to be honest. If your gut tells you to go with two different ones, choose one at random and try it out.

Finally one other thing that I found surprising was even if someone marks cognitive behavioral therapy on their listing (A lot of them do!) - they may not use it in a 'tool-based' fashion. Meaning, you won't get a lot of homework.

If you are someone who needs take home work to be able to function, this could be a question you ask during your calls.

Here is an example of how it could go:

You have the criteria: 1. Must be LGBTQ positive 2. Must accept my insurance 3. Must be skills-based oriented around processing emotions

With these three, if I cannot find the information on their page, I can ask them during the consultation call something like:

1. If you don't accept insurance, can you do a super-bill so I can file a claim with my insurance? 2. Do you do skills-based learning as part of your practice They may say "no, but I do X, Y, Z" in response

Anyway, I'm not editing this down but hopefully that helps a little.

I did what rednalexa suggested: asked for help and recommendations from folks in my life who have used mental health professionals and swear by them.

When I met professionals for an initial consultation, I paid close attention to my comfort with each and how I felt about sharing the deepest details of what has been one of the hardest periods of my life.

Through those recommendations, I found someone with whom I felt comfortable and chose to move forward.

Like many things in life, I recommend just taking a first step; in this case, an initial consultation. Follow your gut, if you can. Don't feel good about it? Don't move forward.

I struggled to find a good therapist and had sort of given up for a while, but years later I was able to find a really good one (which happened to be a neuropsychologist) through a referral from my psychiatrist. You might have some luck attempting something similar if you can.

That's very inspiring. I admire your clarity and determination. I wish you all the best on your journey!

Sorry to hear about you and your daughter, and I hope you're both doing better. Was she a heavy social media/cell phone user? It's been shown to cause mental issues in teens, especially girls.

That sounds incredible, thanks for sharing! Do you have any advice on connecting to yourself and living that connection?

I believe it differs dramatically for each person. What works for me may not work for anyone else. Here's what is working well for me:

* Taking long walks on trails, without my phone or podcasts.

* Tending my little garden.

* Meditating. Not some prescribed formula, but something I sort of "fell into." However, some common meditative tools have proved very useful: body scans and breath work.

* Being deeply curious about myself. Why did/do I want X? Do the reasons feel right? Why did Y make me angry/sad/happy?

* Practicing acceptance and letting go of things that don't serve me.

The tricky part is that I don't believe any of this would work for someone else if they just tried to go through the motions of it.

I do believe, though, that being deeply curious about yourself is the way to start in figuring out what you need to connect.

Question your motives. Question your emotional responses. Dig until you understand. Dig harder when half your brain is screaming at you in pain to _stop_ digging.

I'm mid 30s and recently quit my job due to burnout and a sort-of-MLC I guess. A lifetime of insecurity, bad habits, and self-deception caught up with me in a big way. But I'm grateful for it, because part of what you said:

> The tricky part is that I don't believe any of this would work for someone else if they just tried to go through the motions of it.

...I find to be very true. I rarely see people capable of making change in their life without hitting some sort of breaking point or critical mass of dysfunction. Stuff blowing up in my life (to my credit, it was at my choice, rather than being forced) is the only reason I've been able to do much of what you're describing.

It really all starts with awareness, as you describe. Having the mental and emotional bandwidth to sit with your feelings instead of trying to distract yourself from them. Unlearning a lifetime of bad habits that were built to distract and soothe - constantly checking phone, wasting time browsing online, subjecting yourself to material online that only harms or frustrates you, dealing with codependency by jumping between relationships, the list goes on.

Awareness leads to an ability to analyze, which leads to an ability to change. It's unfortunate the growth I've had in the past several months is the same growth I saw some kids in high school already go through, but they had the benefit of either better mental health or (more likely) the right home environment that fostered that growth from a very young age. I had a home environment that punished this style of growth.

I hope your daughter is doing better. I was also hospitalized around the same age for the same reason (a few years older). I didn't realize it at the time, but the hospitalization was very traumatic (and massively fucked up looking back on it as an adult, some of those adults working there should be in prison), and that trauma shaped my life pretty strongly for decades.

> I think our best years are ahead of us.

With your newfound awareness, they almost certainly are.

Signed as one who is about 15 years down the path you have realized...

I'm glad to hear you that you're amidst that process

As someone looking to replicate your success, I'd love to know some of your learnings

This 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.

Thanks for saying this out loud.

On a similar note, I find the "don't waste it on a car, use your imagination" dichotomy quite shallow. Do whatever that makes you happy. You can buy that car if you want, and do great things at the same time too if that's your thing. Or, maybe you're happy with your car, and your work too. You don't owe anyone to be that designated person. You may need to own that car in order to truly process whether you need it in your life or not, or to feel having control over one part of your life, and transfer that perspective to the other parts. Human psychology is quite complicated, and usually you're the most informed person about yourself.

If you buy the right car on the depreciation curve you won’t lose that much a lot of these crisis choices can be quite cheap if you don’t do them impulsively.

These days well maintained used cars do not depreciate as much as it used to before. Due to inflation you might be able to sell your 5 year old car for only like 20% depreciation.

Austin Kleon's books are not hustle porn to me. In fact, it comes across as the opposite. It feels like tips for being creative. Some of the advice is for unplugging, pursuing side projects, practicing procrastination -- things that do not sound like your typical "top 100 tips to succeed" tripe. The third book -- Show Your Work -- could be taken as hustle porn. But if you read it in context with the others, it doesn't seem that way. Just a way to get your work out there without being spammy. If it seems hustle porn, you might be missing the point.

I don't know anything about this author until now, but by reading the one article and thinking a little critically and reading here, what he said was deceptive. A lot of advice is actually just toxic, because in it's generality, people always give assurances behind it. It might be fine for trivial things, but for shaping major themes in one's life, one really can't have a feeling of FOMO because they don't act on this generic advice.

I say this because I have spending years shaking this off. This is my mid-life crisis (that I decided had to start when I turned 40 :P ) What you say about success and happiness is relevant - even if "success" is an implicit measurement in places where hustle is a religion, it's best to ignore that stuff and do your thing ... or not. :)

Midlife crisis is about recognizing your mortality and limited time left, and looking at what you have done and finding it comes up short to what you hoped for your life.

The reality of how little time you have left is a key component, that death is stalking every decision and will likely curtail some plans.

This is true, but I find it's also difficult to really judge the worth of what I've done in life. My mind's default for judging is: "Was my work popular? Did it make good money?" And all my endeavors have certainly failed in those regards. But of course there are many things we do in daily life that can hardly be judged that way, and whose effects we cannot see.

The Qur’an uses the term al-dunya for life on this earth. The word dunya means “nearer” or “something less important or ordinary.” In multiple places, the Qur’an comments on the real nature of life on earth and warns us about its true disposition. It has been described as something of a transient nature, a place of transit, test and trials, and actions. It is also a place for learning, spiritual development and growth. What one achieves here is manifested during the next phase of existence which is a constant, higher and more permanent phase of existence:

And what is the life of this world other than play and amusement? (Qur’an, Surah al-Anʿam, 6:32)

And I created not the jinn and mankind except that they should worship Me (Qur'an, Surah al-Dhariyat - Verses 56)

age of forty has special significance in Islam. Regarding aging, Allah says in the Qur’an, “… until, when he reaches maturity and reaches forty years, he says, ’My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favor which You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and to work righteousness of which You will approve, and make righteous for me my offspring. Indeed, I have repented to You, and indeed, I am of the Muslims’” (Qur’an, 46:15).

That’s the cultural default. It is designed to make you the perfect economic actor: always grasping at something unattainable. The resulting void is conveniently matched with a dazzling array of products to use your hard earned money on.

You’re being played.

One curious explanation of midlife crisis I've seen was that at the age of 33 the "spark of spirit" completes its connection with its earthly vessel, looks down and expresses its major disappointment with how little has been done. The more advanced, who haven't wasted time, this connection feels like sudden rush of wisdom and intuition.

Honest question. Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it?

I am a frist generation immigrant in the US. I do ok for myself and am at a vantage point of seeing my peers etc have these issues but I also can't forget that my parents worked much harder for much less, with similar, if not lot more stresses, and I don't think it was even an option for my mom/dad to have the luxury of burnout or on a midlife crisis, even therapy would have been an expense to think twice about. They worked Saturdays as well, had much worse commutes, longer hours and they barely even took vacations etc. as much as me and my peers now. They seem to have done ok for themselves and are reasonably happy, and fine in their older age now.

Are these just problems that one faces only after they have certain comforts in life and can afford to have such problems?

Short answer: it may certainly be the case that growing up in first-world countries more easily primes people for later midlife crises with their greater societal focus on wealth, status, fame, materialism, etc.

Longer answer: I don't think it's a matter of "affording" or "not affording" per se, but likely depends on your younger-self's expectations and life goals, which are completely free and up to you, you can desire and daydream about whatever you want (though environment and nature of upbringing will certainly have an influence); the "crises" comes from realizing that your expectations and hopes may very well never come to fruition, and whether or not you can deal with that. Maybe they were unrealistic or selfish expectations to begin with and you should let them go, maybe you actually made some serious life mistakes with big costs and have to accept that. Maybe you're still caught up in bad habits and have to reassess your values. Whether or not you can "afford" any of that is also up to you. So it likely depends on what exactly your earlier expectations and life goals were, and how important they were/are to your self-perception.

> Is midlife crisis and/or burn out a problem that you face only when you can afford it?

Yes. See Maslow’s Hierarchy.

I think it depends on what you mean by "you can afford it".

At some level that's the nature of midlife crisis, identifying what it is you have and what you want, and what you can have.

If you are happy with what you have despite all its costs, it's not really a crisis because you've identified that as such. Even if you're not entirely happy with it but you recognize that it is a net good for you and your family, there's no crisis either. If some things you identified as benefits before are now seen as serious costs — to family, children, morality, or integrity, among other things — but there's an easy and painless way to rectify things, there's also no crisis.

The problem — the crisis — is in recognizing or believing that what you once saw as good things are actually costly, but rectifying it is also fraught with large and probably unknown costs. Maybe you've realized the vocation you're in is actually rife with immorality and corruption, or maybe you've realized that your career has completely cost your children precious, limited time with a good family, or whatever, but you've gotten so far along that the costs and likelihood of changing careers are also great. That's the nature of the crisis.

At some level I think you could say it's a crisis of privilege but I don't think so. I think it comes anytime a set of life choices, over a long time and with many costs, leads one to a position of deep dissatisfaction and realization that there's limited time to right things. My sense is that doesn't really depend on socioeconomic status necessarily.

The other side of it is there are apparently studies showing similar mood changes over the course of life happen in completely other species, so there's an argument that it really has nothing to do with existential or sociological issues at all and is very biological. Based on my own experiences that seems hard to believe though; my guess is midlife crises can happen for many different reasons, and aren't limited to midlife.

Daily Seneca quote: "What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hands."

This mentality is why I'm nomadding despite the constant threats of Return to Office. (I'm at Google.)

I spent a dozen years in San Francisco. I know what serves me there and what doesn't. I know that I find day-to-day life there low-key depressing. I know my friends there have largely moved away and/or moved on to the next chapters of their lives. I know it's way too hard to find a suitable romantic partner there.

Kowtowing to the RTO whims would be relegating myself to another year that's probably a lot like the other ones, with the hard parts getting harder with every year lost.

I don't know where my forever home is, but I owe it to myself to figure it out.

Where have you tried so far?

What would you say makes San Francisco particularly difficult to find a suitable romantic partner for you if you don’t mind answering? I am curious to hear what you think because I have also heard the same thing about SF and even about Austin, TX.

There are 12% more men than women there. This might not sound bad, but remember 37% of people in CA are already married…

It's also become very trendy to be "polyamorous" over there. I think part of it sort of fits with the culture where there are a lot of people constantly arriving in and leaving the city, and even people making a lot of money have to have roommates because housing is so expensive. It means there aren't a lot of people looking for anything long-term.

Sounds like it also means a few males get all the females, so odds are even worse.

I was talking to a coworker that lives in NYC, and apparently the ratio is reverse there. Up to 20% more women than men in some age brackets - he says it's really easy, and enjoyable, to date at his age (early 30s).

>> 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.

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

> 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.

I grew up in a church and will tell you right off the bat that neither church nor family prevents one. Googling will give you no shortage of Christian articles and resources around dealing with them. Nobody is immune to that sense of "everything looks peachy on the outside, internally there's a lot of frustration" with the status quo. It does give you a big blast radius so your midlife crisis can wreck a family or two, though, if it leads you towards certain things.

Also, 5+ kids may seem helpful, but not because you won't face existential crisis with five kids -- you just will have more trouble finding time to process. Kids keep you very busy, until they don't.

As an ex-church person: the "community" is pretty hurtful to a lot of people and isn't immune to high school clique / cult of personality type things, even if you discount other obvious harms (the experience of gay kids in church, women being told they can't teach, way-too-frequent abuses of adolescents by church authorities like youth pastors and priests).

Christian stuff in particular is also heavy on the shame and that is pretty bad for psychological safety & wellness. My mother in law was a divorcee and made to feel real bad about that even to this day. As a boy I remember growing up and self-flagellating for every "impure" thought that crossed my mind. "Rich spiritual life" is a pretty branding phrase for bankrupt ideology.

Christianity is heavy on the guilt. If you’re self-flagellating, that’s a sign it’s guilt, not shame.

East Asian cultures are more about the shame. And try not to go anywhere where the social order is based on Fear.

I'm East Asian. Guilt and shame here are the same thing -- the distinction between moral vs non-moral is blurry at best. The only difference is who you're disappointing and what the perceived consequence is.

> Kids keep you very busy, until they don't.

Honestly, seeing some catholic families with 5+ kids, the model where one partner simply spends all time in work and hobbies while leaving all childcare to the other one is super common too.

Doesn’t really seem fair for the wife, I don’t really understand why she puts up with it

Its sad that you had such a negative experience of church, due to people's failings. Its not like that everywhere. There are church communities that are welcoming to people that are divorced, gay, etc. Sounds like you've been among people who lack of proper understanding of "love others as yourself" and "judge not lest thy be judged" which are fundamental to true Christianity (and other religions too). I'd advocate, don't give up, don't dismiss religion based on people's failings, but instead, challenge people

Another way to look at it is that this isn't "people's failings." This is structural. Churches perpetuate problematic power structures and base their teachings on incoherent writings that can easily be interpreted to mean all kinds of nasty things. You can point to Jesus sayings in "true Christianity" and still have to explain yourself as to why Apostle Paul is allowed to say some crazy stuff in the same compilation text (the bible) that everyone loves to harp on. Also, didn't Jesus compare a gentile woman to a dog? Wowza that's some offensive and racist stuff.

> There are church communities that are welcoming to people that are divorced, gay, etc

There are plenty of church communities that _claim_ to be welcoming to such folks. You don't have to stick around long to see that it's not true. And it's also not hard to see why - the underlying foundations of the Christian church especially are rotten. Churches don't have full control of their congregants so churches will never be safe spaces as long as they teach from texts that are racist, sexist, and encourage illogical thinking. I _did_ church shop for a year in hip San Francisco of all places, before coming to this (obvious in hindsight) realization. TBT that time I walked into a church and the first thing they said was "Women were created to be mens' helper" - a panel with Francis Chan. Walked out pretty fast after that.

> I'd advocate, don't give up, don't dismiss religion based on people's failings, but instead, challenge people

What does that mean -- challenge people? You're encouraging folks like me to put up with endless bullshit and look for something that doesn't exist. No thanks.

Thanks for reply :) By "challenge people" - I mean, rather than put up with BS, relentlessly challenge it, call it out . One might attack homophobia like this: "You believe in a loving God? OK. Does a loving God smite down someone who finds themselves to be gay, or does God celebrate all committed loving relationships including ones that happen to be of the same gender". OK, I'm very liberal on this, and some Christian friends wouldn't take the same line, but they don't seem to dismiss this argument completely. I have a friend who's happily been going to a Catholic church for decades. He lives with a long-term male partner. He doesn't shout from the rooftops that he's gay but doesn't hide it either. Many people like him a lot. Some of them may think its not OK to be gay, but they like him anyway. They also do seem to believe in "sort yourself out rather than judging other". So it seems to just work out really. I agree with you about churches perpetuating problematic power structures, clericalism and so forth.. But that in itself is people's failings isn't it? Doesn't mean that all or even many Christians are supportive of that. Treatment of women - often women are not treated well , whether in the church or not. Shouldn't be happening.. but again human failings rather than something fundamental about religion or church per se, IMHO. Personally I think that churches such as Catholic, Orthodox etc that don't allow women to be priests, should be re-evaluating that, I don't see that's what Jesus wanted, and its very disrespectful, and wasting 50% of human talent to ban women, IMHO. Little secret, here in the UK amongst Catholic laity you'll find most support women priests. As regards nasty things in the bible, well, taken literally the bible can seem offensive, appalling etc, that's why to me we also need 2000 years worth of theologians thought to interpret it, and need to be careful about going straight to it picking out bits because can get wild misinterpretations that way. To use your example of apparent racism, isn't The Good Samaritan a good counter-example i:e anti-racist? I guess my entire argument is this - when we encounter people claiming to be of a religion that promotes love to each other, and they blatantly do the opposite, we should in the nicest possible way call that out and invite them to do what they claim to believe. Also there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what teachings are, what Jesus really said, a misunderstanding that God is somehow punitive or vengeful which Jesus tried to clear up but we still seem to fall victim to. Well, if you don't believe in all of this anyway, fine, no problem :) There are a lot of atheists out there who behave in a much better way than most Christians. ;) I have a couple of friends like that too. Doesn't stop me arguing (politely) with them though ;)

Dude if your religion needs 2000 years of theologians to interpret correctly, all the while being a pretext for war, genocide, racism, sexism, and an accidental source of child abuse, your religion sucks and the world would be better off without it.

You don't need "better Christians" -- you need people to stop being Christians.

> Also there's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what teachings are, what Jesus really said, a misunderstanding that God is somehow punitive or vengeful which Jesus tried to clear up but we still seem to fall victim to.

That your religion is this incoherent is itself a huge problem and the source of many ills.

> I agree with you about churches perpetuating problematic power structures, clericalism and so forth.. But that in itself is people's failings isn't it? Doesn't mean that all or even many Christians are supportive of that.

You're saying blame the priest who diddled kids, not the church that teaches priests to repress their natural urges until they manifest in taking advantage of defenseless children. You're saying blame the idiots who "misinterpreted" the Bible and created churches where women cannot lead, and not the texts that provide the argument for their behavior. That's not agreeing with me on problematic power structures, that's failing to see problematic power structures.

> Treatment of women - often women are not treated well , whether in the church or not. Shouldn't be happening.. but again human failings rather than something fundamental about religion or church per se, IMHO.

Except that the basis for western oppression for women is largely rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs. And in the middle east, Islam is the source.

It's all garbage.

Someone downvoted you but it wasn't me. We possibly shouldn't carry this on too long in case people feel its gone way off topic, but.. these are important subjects. To address some of your points :). "if your religion needs 200 yr of theologians" ... its not the religion, its the Bible. Big difference. Its hardly surprising if a book written 2000 yrs ago, totally different time, culture etc, needs expertise to be understood , and going to it directly and trying to make sense of it cause confusion, right? Pretext for genocide etc... well, terrible things have been done in the name of religion, but terrible things happen with or without religion. Look at Russia/Ukraine. I'd argue its not religion causing it. People that want to hate will find something to fight about be it religion, resources, power, football teams etc. I do agree actually that where people's beliefs are incoherent this is the source of many ills. But I'd argue against that being the fundamental religion being incoherent. Regarding abuse by clerics, I do agree, and I think a lot of Christians would, that the rule of celibacy for priests is extremely unhelpful, and has led as you say, to deviant behaviour and abuse that has wrecked people's lives. The response by church(es) has been severely lacking, often appalling, and the main reason for that would seem to be that the hierarchy themselves are celibate, not having normal healthy relationships and haven't a clue how what to do. So I, like many others would advocate ditch the celibacy requirement ASAP. The hierarchy don't necessarily think they can do that though, they think they'll alienate churches in the developing world, cause a schism etc, its a mess. But, and you may think I'm an idiot to say this, I argue again, that's human failings, and doesn't mean that the religion should be thrown away as unworkable. I would believe, that's not what Jesus would have wanted. Now, maybe you don't believe, and that's absolutely fine. No-one should ever be pressured into having any beliefs or religion (yet another thing unhelpful people have done within the church, and again, nevertheless not a reason to disband it IMHO). But I would say, maybe stay away from the church if you don't believe, but if you have any hint of belief, try to fix these problems. By, like I say, challenging people. Regarding Judaism, Christianity and Islam being the source of oppression of women, that's certainly an interesting one, I'd have to go away and think about that. Gut feeling , its unlikely to be the only source of that, but I know what you're saying there's certainly been structural oppression of women within organised religion. To summarise I think a lot of things that anger you about the church its absolutely fair to be furious about, and these issues massively frustrate people inside it who still regularly go to church. Where we differ is indeed that you say people should stop being Christians whereas I do indeed say people should be better Christians. Hope you can find happiness and purpose anyway whatever route you take. :)

Going to church regularly does not mean you have a rich spiritual life.

Interestingly, it seems like some women's monastic communities (ostensibly the pinnacle of rich spiritual life and engagement with community) are much less likely to experience midlife crises, see https://www.jstor.org/stable/43682330 Figures 1 and 2.

I reckon nuns don't deal with a lot of Zoom job interviews after being laid off, pointy-haired bosses, relationship troubles, making ends meet, and paying rent. That helps a little.

Yes, you can almost say that St. Augustine and Luther and others were having some sort of quarter/mid-life crises.

When those 5+ kids move out of the house, that's when those guys tend to have their midlife crisis.

I think it's again a modern secular assumption that your kids move out and there's some sort of deep emptiness.

The traditional expectation is that your kids move out to be married and bless you with grandchildren, not to abandon you to rot.

I don't see how the kids "blessing" their parents with grandchildren matters much. My parents had a hard time adapting after I, as the youngest, also moved out and finally started being able to support myself, even though they had grandchildren from my eldest sibling to think about.

In the end, for them the point still stands that their own kids are adults now, and while grandchildren are fun to take care of, they aren't typically the same amount of responsibility on grandparents as on parents. It still leads to suddenly having time to think about their own life, as well as the freedom to take risks, creating the same room for a crisis.

> My parents had a hard time adapting after I, as the youngest, also moved out and finally started being able to support myself, even though they had grandchildren from my eldest sibling to think about.

"Thinking about" probably won't do them much good. Seeing them on a regular basis, on the other hand, has great effects on many grandparents. Obviously, this requires that children don't move far away from parents, but many family-oriented parents stay close.

I don't literally mean that they only have to think about them.

I thought the circumstances you describe are what leads to the typical midlife crisis. Not always, but people wake up and realize they're trapped in a life (kids, obligations, job) that sort of crept up on them, and feel like they need to let off some steam.

A lot of (perhaps including the article's authors) modern "mid-life crises" are more what I've heard of as "quarter life crises" - you finish school, get a job, you're in a rut where you don't have an obvious next step and you're starting at possible decades of the same, you get depressed. But now a lot of people are like 35 at that time so it almost overlaps with the 80's version of a midlife crisis. This happened to me, I accomplished roughly what I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next.

There is this book

https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Predictable-Crises-Adult-Lif...

which factually points out that most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so. I had one around 30, another in my early 40s, and another at 49. If you read between the lines in Freud you could also get the picture that a psychoanalysis would be likely to span the duration of such a crisis (say 18 months) and improve the outcome you get.

The author, Gail Sheehy, gave a talk at Ithaca College about a decade ago and actually said that she disowned that book for a few reasons:

(1) Passages is positive for divorce as a way that people who are evolving at different rates and in different directions to realize themselves. She realized later on that divorce is overall highly destructive.

(2) The paths that people take aren't quite so predictable.

(3) Passages was based on a study of graduates of an elite school, one thing that stands out is that none of the case studies consider serious deprivation, in fact you never once hear that somebody wanted to do X or Y but didn't because they couldn't afford it. In the sense that the experience of most people is "dark matter" you might want to read

https://www.amazon.com/Silences-Tillie-Olsen/dp/1558614400

In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing but for most ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful.

Sheehy went on to write numerous more books on the same subject.

Is there an alternative to Passages that has stood the test of time better?

This book is based on the same study

https://www.freepsychotherapybooks.org/ebook/wisdom-of-the-e...

it doesn't deal with the "voicelesness" of the "working class" (closer to the British idea of "working class" than the Marxist one, notably "working class" people in Britain frequently aren't working) but that voicelessness is a defining characteristic of that group. Anyone who finds a voice has left that class and can't really speak for it.

Divorce is often extremely healthy. It's not reasonable to characterize it as either.

In the way that an amputation is. Better make sure that limb was definitely gangrenous because a part of you will be gone forever.

That's really not the best analogy. More like a cancer: a part of you that shouldn't even be there to begin with.

Maybe for an annulment, but that’s very rarely the case for divorces entered into consensually.

It's not very rare at all. Much the opposite in fact.

You are asking a lot of the word often here. Also, the perspective of who it is healthy for is skewed according to the data out there on outcomes after divorce.

Some people are better off after a divorce.

Most people are ruined financially by it. If you are a pro baseball player or Hollywood actor you can afford to lose half your wealth and support two households. People in the bottom 80% can’t afford it.

> most people go through several crises in their adult life. As a rule of thumb you have one every seven years or so.

That's terrifying. I haven't recovered from the crisis 5 years ago. Not ready for another.

> In particular divorce might work out well for somebody like Bill Gates or Elon Musk who can trade in their tired old nag for a hot young thing

That just sounds sad. How lonely do you have to be before it makes sense to trade in your closest companion for eye candy?

Look, Bill Gates was in such bad shape he asked Jeffery Epstein for marriage advice and that was after Epstein had gotten busted the first time.

> the experience of most people is "dark matter"

Love this, maps really well onto my experience. I see (and feel) a sharp deliniation between do-ers and be-ers, with the be-ers wishing they could do, and the do-ers not having time to process what they're doing.

> for ordinary people and their families it's profoundly harmful

People want (and believe they deserve) what they used to have, or what they see someone else has. I think the crux of the midlife crisis is coming to terms with tradeoffs. Everyone has spent potential to get where they are, and there aren't do-overs.

"I think the crux of the midlife crisis is coming to terms with tradeoffs. Everyone has spent potential to get where they are, and there aren't do-overs." << This. It is at the same time crisis-inducing and very motivating, depending on your situation and personality. You look down the pike and think "If I have an average lifespan, I can kick this shit into gear and have the whole timespan I've already lived to get some stuff done" or you think "I only have (x) years left, it's too late already." But either way, the crux of the matter is that you have a limited set of choices left. You had a limited set of choices before, too, but young people don't realize that. They don't quite feel the chapters being ripped out of the book of life yet, they don't see the just-pruned branches falling from the tree of life... Every affirmative choice you make is also a choice that kills something else. And this is not bad, necessarily -- a well-pruned fruit tree yields more fruit, without breaking. But it's not how we've been raised. We've been raised with limitlessness. We have not been raised with the interior disciplines of pruning and weeding and culling.

I had the sense last year that the limitless desire for a different life is a destructive force.

Mid-life crisis examples of how this desire shows up as regret: "What if I had stayed with that previous girlfriend instead of marrying my wife?", "What if I had moved to this other city instead of my home?", etc.

My personal conclusion is that this limitless desire is a dark pit of despair with no bottom. This may be part of the reasoning behind the tenth commandment seems to be applicable - "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

That desire can be toxic to the point of destruction is mostly treated as a foreign concept to our contemporary world.

So, I made the conscious choice to go in the other direction toward the light, and to see what adventure awaits over there.

Not sure fully what that means yet, but a part of it at least is accepting and embracing my own life as it is today, including all of the constraints.

It seems to me like the path out of the mid-life crisis is about signing up for the next adventure, letting go of the past, and looking forward to what's still to come. And most definitely not letting "desire for else" ruin my gratitude for the fact that I am highly fortunate, and still quite able to live, experience, do, and be so much.

> 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 high.

There is just so much social pressure to jump into the rat race. I mean, part of me wants to be more ambitious -- to really see how far my abilities and efforts can take me.

However, if I have learned one thing in life it is that everything has a cost. So, what if I do accomplish whatever career goals I set out to achieve? I think a lot of the ambition that comes and goes in my head originates not out of a desire to fulfill my own wants but to kind of self-medicate some deep rooted self-esteem issues/feelings of inadequacy.

What do you all think?

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 someone making a conscious decision (eg not taking the most demanding job in order to have time w the family)

The other thing unambitious people often miss is that working hardcore can be fun and energizing in its own right and it can develop you as a person holistically.

I don't think many ambitious people work hard despite hating it every second. I think they rather enjoy it and benefit from it (similar to someone who likes exercise). At least that's been my experience and perception.

> 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 complicated than chasing you 'passion', whatever that means.

In my experience the happiest and most stable people I know are financially secure. Not hard workers, not working on some magnum opus. Just plain well-off. One is a stay at home dad who hasn't worked a day since he married his wife at 24. Great guy. He isn't posting on hackernews about life hacks and bragging about the grind. He just golfs and raises his kids and winks when I make fun of him for it.

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)

I once spoke to a counselor who emphasized the seasonal nature of life. Which reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3 (below). Find your seasonal purpose(s) and move in those directions until they are exhausted. Sometimes one's purpose is simply to rest and pray/meditate on the next purpose and phase.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...

It's hard to discern motivations, but I always like to pray on if what I'm doing is by faith and is loving. Against those things there is no law. At the end of the day, the only thing gained or lost here is eternal, and I'm not going to the grave with any of the earthly accumulations or losses. So most of the "counting the cost" needs to be in the spiritual domain.

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 at 34 now (without kids) and still feeling like I'm 25 because my perception of time is warped by attention deficit.. I feel like the only years I care about are soon to be over (under 40).

The further I get from my childhood the less I want to be here.

I seriously think that we need to collectively stop worshipping individualism so hard. Go do something for others.

The biggest problem I noticed in your post is the tense you're using to describe yourself. You're describing your story in the past tense. You now have the resources to write an even more successful/interesting/fulfilling chapter in whatever line of business is most interesting to you and potentially have another step function in wealth. Each step function in wealth gives you more potential for impact in a measurable way in other peoples' lives. I hope you decide that you're just getting started.

I can’t remember who said it, “money can’t buy happiness but it’s way more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes”.

> 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.

Something that is less analogical and more biographical: we are primates chasing and arguing over the shiniest and new type of banana. The analogical part left is what the "banana" might be.

As primates, we are unbelievably ill-equipped to handle the Internet. This dream of the Internet connecting us together turned into the nightmare it is because it taps into our primitive emotions, which ends up being most of them.

I find no solace in evolutinary psych “explanations” during dark nights of the soul. It feels like nihilism dressed up in Science, with an undertone of “well this is the best we got so tough luck!” to be frank.

If they work for you, great.

What is they? What is working for me?

I just gave an observation. If one wanted to do something with that observation, then I think it's fair to say that we should design our technology with the limitations of our emotional intelligence in mind. We cannot keep assuming that our emotional intelligence is infinite and can absorb everything we throw at it. Our emotional capacity is limited, and so we should acknowledge that and design our systems with that in mind. But, we don't.

By the way, nihilism is a valid approach as a philosophy and has several important things to say. It is not what it is commonly understood to be.

The way to deal with this is to avoid the rat race and all the crap that comes with it: lifestyle bloat, houses that own you, fancy cars, etc. it’s a rigged game.

Your job should serve your purposes. Once it stops doing that, something has to change or you’re going to be unhappy.

The curse of midlife is being able to see the need and justification for bullshit like the rat race, knowing full well you perpetuate it in your own small way by participating, while also becoming cognizant that there’s more to life than empty status signaling. You see the extent to which people self-medicate to keep themselves in the race, and the sheer number of people who simply disengage in some way because they can’t deal with it.

The only way forward is through.

Isn't the stereotypical midlife crisis the Dad whose kids have all moved out? I don't think that has anything to do with modernity or secularity, it's more to do with a large change that triggers a revaluation of your life. That could happen to anyone.

I view the stereotypical midlife crisis as the dad/husband who decides to buy a sports car and act 25 again possibly cheat on his wife.

That's the stereotypical midlife crisis "what" for sure. I was more talking about the "who". My point was I don't think it's limited to the secular modern person.

// the Dad whose kids have all moved out

I think that too is a modern and secular thing. If you got 5 kids there's a good chance the older one has made you a grandfather while the younger ones are still at home. So you sort of transition from meaning to meaning

> 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.

As someone who grew up in a religious family/community, this comment made me burst out laughing.

When modern people feel unhappy they often fantasize about an idealized traditional or primitive life imagining that would be better.

People in those lives often do the opposite, imagining being unencumbered or living some kind of cosmopolitan life.

It’s pretty normal to imagine “elsewhere” when you are unhappy. “Elsewhere” is by definition not where you are.

As far as I can tell angst is normal for human beings and everyone in every lifestyle feels it.

>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.

I think you're sidestepping an important nuance of what Jung was saying.

I agree with the "ideas have people" framing.

If you are choosing a set of ideas to "he had by" - ones that let you navigate life (eg bypassing the midlife crisis) sound good.

It's also very easy to fall for the sensation that not being religious grants one omniscient knowledge of those who are. Somewhat ironically, some religions are some of the best ways to learn about this and other important phenomena that seem unknown to secularists (in ways that are important, and doing some reading ain't guaranteed to make the cut).

Everyone is doing their best, but each of us have our own blind spots. Best to work as a team so we can cover each other's shortcomings.

Having grown up in a highly religious community:

> a rich spiritual life and deep engagement with community

I kind of suspect this is one of the ways mid-life crisis manifests. That, and covert alcoholism.

> I wonder if the mid life crisis is a completely modern and secular malady

The hint is in the name - crisis.

I genuinely think it's a point people reach where they realize (or finally admit to themselves) that what they've been doing with their lives up until this point is deeply unsatisfying, so they make drastic changes.

Our "modern" western life is not fulfilling, healthy or enjoyable.

>Our "modern" western life is not fulfilling, healthy or enjoyable.

Who is "our"? Western countries, especially Anglo countries, are comprised of a thousand thousand different cultures. Which among those are unfulfilling, unenjoyable, unhealthy? I'm sure some are nice. We're not all the same, not remotely.

> Which among those are unfulfilling, unenjoyable, unhealthy?

I was thinking of the one where we go to jobs for 40+ hours a week that are not fulfilling, we don't get to spend much time with our families, we don't get time to sleep and exercise enough... and we have to do it for essentially our entire lives in the hopes we'll get a few years to be put out to pasture

Sure is pretty unfulfilling to be not independently wealthy

There are many other ways to go about it, wealth is not needed to live a fulfilling life.

I have found it extremely fulfilling to work for my own needs - building houses, hunting my own food, growing my own vegetables. Doing so takes 20-30 hours per week, and the rest of the time I get to spend with my friends and family.

Obviously it's not for everyone, but I'm saying that people get into a mid life "crisis" because they realize what they've been doing isn't making them happy deep down.

Sounds like a nice balance! You might not be rich (or you might be, I don't know) but you're wealthier than most, in the sense of financial independence.

> financial independence

I don't think I'm financially independent in the sense that most people use that phrase. I certainly don't have enough money that I can just sit around all day every day even for 6 months. I would have no food and no heat and would die.

I have to work, but it's working directly for my own survival, not working for a boss to earn money to buy my survival.

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.

Different religion, but my ex-wife's family were all baptists and I've never met women as angry at men as the older women in that family. They had obeyed and submitted and got angrier and angrier as the decades wore on. Didn't help that, despite the strict religion, there was a good bit of alcoholism amongst the men.

They did have very good food at the family reunions, and a big family, but that's about the limit of positive characteristics I can enumerate. (Not that everyone was bad, a few cousins managed to join the modern world of loving-kindness and science).

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.

Nearing-50, non-religious person checking in here: I don't think it has much to do with religion or non-religion. I must be really lucky or really privileged because I haven't had even a hint of "crisis" that I can remember. Knock on wood that I don't catch it somewhere.

Isn't the common denominator of a midlife crisis a yearning for the past? Overwhelming nostalgia? Dad buying a sports car so he can pretend to be 20 and virile again? Mom downing the mimosas at 10AM wishing she didn't make so many mistakes in the past? Uncle Joe can't stop talking about how he was High School senior football captain and had the time of his life in the '70s and that everything sucks now?

Me, on the other hand? I'd never want to go back to my 30s or 20s and especially my teenage years. High School was literally the worst part of my life, I'm talking rock bottom, and my 20s were not much better. But every year thereafter has been better than the previous one. I'm totally optimistic about the future! And while I might not be making more money year after year, I always feel like I have a purpose to achieve, and as my kid grows up, there always seems like there are future moments to look forward to. None of this requires religion.

> Isn't the common denominator of a midlife crisis a yearning for the past? Overwhelming nostalgia?

I don't think so. I'd describe a midlife crisis as more of a fear you don't have enough time to do what's next. I've always wanted a Ferrari; if I don't get it now, when will I? I discovered bouldering in my 40's and hate the fact that I can never be competitive; if only I had started 20 years earlier... at this point, every year limits how much time I have left for those new adventures I haven't discovered yet.

I think Uncle Joe just complains because he's crabby.

Exactly this. You realize that your choices actually matter in the big picture. You have only so many years to work with, it becomes clear that some of the things in the “later” bucket will have to move to the “never” bucket. That makes you question things much more. Should I really go to the pub for the umpteenth time with my mates and lose my Sunday to a hangover? Oh I’d rather do something else and get a full Sunday! That’s only one example, but it is also a good one. You can try to make the most of your loss of invincibility and infinity and utilize that feeling to make better choices than in the past. No point dwelling on if those 10000 hours playing video games were well spent.

Dads often buy sportscars around fifty or so not to pretend they are twenty and hot again, but because they are finally in a position to do so. Finances mostly in order, kids are leaving the nest and seem to be doing OK.

So you see that car you have always wanted but never bought because it's impractical and expensive and say to yourself, "I don't need four seats any more, and I do have the money if I'm careful. Why not? I've always wanted it."

Of course some folks do this irresponsibly, but it doesn't have to be a fantasy about pretending to be something you used to be. Just now you can, when before you couldn't.

For what it's worth, I don't think this is right. The "well, how did I get here?" problem can happen to anybody. Maybe it's not happening to your friends, but certainly there are many people like them who wake up some days wondering why they are struggling to find enough purpose and meaning in all those beautiful things they've built their lives around, and battling to envision their path back to contentment.

The U Curve probably correlates with midlife crises being that being at the low of the U curve with some other push triggers a crises. But yeah religiosity does correlate positively with happiness (no surprise there - you offload existential worries for religious dogma)

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.8376...

It's not!! We were told as kids that prophets in general became prophets at that age around 40!! It's the case for Mohammed at least and if your read up on his life around that age, you can easily imagine he was going through a mid-life crisis!!

One can imagine anything, including unrealistic and baseless things. Reality, however, is different. This is evident by the many people who carefully studied his biography and ended up embracing Islam (some of them being heavily anti-Islam themselves before that).

A mid-life crisis is not necessarily a bad thing!! It's probably one of the most important spiritual experiences a person can have. We are told that Mohammed used to spend long times in the Hiraa cave kinda meditating or thinking about things that are not part of ordinary life.. Somebody with midlife crisis is one who has questions and searching for answers! They are asking: "Who am I? What am I doing in this world!?"

Contemplating in God's creations is not a midlife crisis, but a spiritual endeavor.

Secular people seem way more emotionally stable to me than those I would call religious.

No doubt it takes different forms now than in the 14th century, but Dante began his Inferno with a mid-life crisis:

  Midway upon the journey of our life
  I found myself within a dark forest
  For the straightforward path had been lost.

Hell, the book of Ecclesiastes could be read as a midlife crisis. “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.”

  A man wakes up in a strange room
  He doesn't recognize the woman next to him
  He gets out of bed, there's a wallet on the dresser
  He opens it up, looks inside at the driver's license in there with his face on it
  And someone else's name

Yes I wouldn't be surprised at all. It's easy to see how much lower suicide rates are for example in so called "third world" countries that have been war torn, due to no small part by Western colonialism, compared to "advanced first world" countries, which are generally highly secular and have higher standards of living. Believing in God plays a major role in maintaining mental sanity, particularly in the faces of challenges.

Personally speaking, Islam has helped me and many others I have either personally observed or heard about navigate far from ideal circumstances. I've known people who have lost spouses, children, or even entire close families, yet they remain steadfast and strong.

> It's easy to see how much lower suicide rates are for example in so called "third world" countries

How good/trustworthy is the data on suicides in those countries? Highly religious countries are not keen on showing and sharing unfavourable data.

That last claim needs backing up.

Sources are World Health Organization (Suicide Rates 2019) and World Health Statistics (World Health Organization)

Lol no, I saw religious cousins’ families go through major shakeups during midlife crises. One ended with divorce after a nice string of affairs and a departure from the church. Another was quitting a stable white collar job, buying a motorcycle, and spending nearly every night at a bar.

A community does not prevent them. A spiritual life definitely doesn’t prevent them (disillusionment is frequently a cause). Kids don’t help, but they certainly put immense pressure on you to not upend everything so it gives the appearance that it might not be happening to outsiders.

100% . People who prioritise helping others, as long as they don't overdo it and burn out, are far less prone to depression. Having a bad day? Feeling depressed, frustrated with your life? Go do something to put a smile on someone else's face. That can really snap you out of it. Of course, we (and I'd have to include myself) all forget to do this as often as we should. I agree that its a secular malady. Its almost as though Jesus was exactly right and knew what was good for us ( * caveat - this is based on an assumption that Jesus actually existed / what he said was correctly reported ;). )

We gave up religion(s) and tradition(s) for consumerism, turns out buying shit is not the optimal long term fulfilment panacea. Add absolute lack of body and mind hygiene and you get to feel like a complete waste of life by the time you hit your 40s. By then you realise discipline/work could have put you in a really nice place, socially, physically, professionally, but now it's too late, the damage is done, you can only pick up the crumbs and have to work twice as hard to get anywhere close to what it could have been => mid life crisis.

Buying a porsche gt3 and a nice house with a swimming pool won't make up for wasting 20+ yours of your life behind a desk

> religious friends ... it's very hard to imagine them going through one

So much great literature and philosophy was written specifically because religious people went through crises of faith where they re-interpreted their entire social/religious world. Kierkegaard being one most people know.

Same thing, different name.

The stereotypical concept of the big singular midlife crisis has been debunked. Crises occur in every age span, and they are highly individual. I agree though that a crisis should never be wasted.

Can you recommend a source re:debunking?

My wife is a psychologist (MSc @ university) and psychotherapist (system and family therapy, which is a modern & rather evidence based variant), and we've talked about this recently. According to their training, the stereotypical midlife crisis is a plot device for stories and not rooted in actual observation.

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.

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.

A lot of us at this age were brought up to believe we could be anything, do anything, achieve anything. The subtext of “pick one or two things and you may achieve modest success” was perhaps not sufficiently emphasised.

Add to this that the definition of “do well” has morphed from “be one of the better accomplished kids in your school” to be more like “be in the top 1% nationally” (or even globally) and there’s a serious impedance mismatch there.

I’m 47 and I’m not sure if I’ve had a midlife crisis, which probably means I have not. My adult kids, however, joke that I’ve had one a year for as long as they’ve been alive. I’m what the late Barbara Sher called a Scanner. I keep a Scanners Daybook and lots of other notebooks and I’m always working on a new project or hobby. When someone asks about my hobbies I often say that I’m a serial hobbyist.

My response is “my hobby is collecting hobbies”. I think it’s more I’m just interested in learning anything and everything.

I’ve never heard of a scanner or a daybook. Coincidentally, I’ve been deeply invested in finding the best way to keep notes… But a non-digital format loses a lot of utility without searching, etc… Maybe I should try it anyway.

This unfortunately falls into the same category in my mind as most advice: "you should ... X."

My mind is sick of hearing the things I should do. I know I should be better and fitter and less wasteful but... I'm tired.

Same. My midlife crisis is hiding from the eyes in the dark outside the campfire instead of shouting at them like a maniac as I did in my 20s/30s. I bought a shitty boat and a steamdeck. Its nice.

Don't. People and peers on the internet are selling the bullshit idea that they're doing a lot and you're just lazying around. It's fake news. They're selling you a mirage, not by malice, but because everyone else is doing it. You keep hearing of the Ken Thompsons and Oppenheimers and you barely have the mental fortitude to plumb 2 JS libraries in a work day.

Stop pursuing the things you should do. Do less. Slave away on someone else's dream the last amount of hours possible to maintain a decent lifestyle. Until you reach a point where you find your innate creativity you thought you had lost in your teenage years shining in, driving you. That might require a massive lifestyle change.

But for the love of God stop listening and comparing to anyone. Working on your dream 1 hour a month is more than the vast majority of people do, and at the end of the day, you'll turn to dust like Albert Einstein did, whether you accomplished something or just played videogames all day.

Amen

> Until you reach a point where you find your innate creativity you thought you had lost in your teenage years shining in, driving you. That might require a massive lifestyle change.

I'm 42, don't have to work any more really and haven't been for some time now, and the innate creativity is not calling me at all. Perhaps I was always a bit dull, lol.

Anyway, people should be seriously prepared for the possibility that their dreams of pursuing projects "once have the time" were just an escape fantasy to help cope with suckiness of work. Lots of people who retire early return back to their previous line of work, because they can't really find meaning in anything, and structured and organized work within some company at least gives a little bit of it. The lesson from that is - don't burn your bridges.

You're not dull. Creativity is a loaded word. To me creativity is a state of play.

Have you ever played as a child? Chance are you did. Are you able to do stuff you enjoy without anyone forcing you to? That's creativity.

My creativity is computer science related. For others it's painting, poetry, dancing or being a top fragger at Counter Strike. Just find out what is fun for you and maximize it. That's innate, and we don't lose it with age, we lose it because we become too busy to deal with bollocks imposed upon us.

And why should you maximise play? Because it's the point where drive, focus, fun and personal accomplishment are maximised. That's what I aim for.

Your words about play, creativity and fun, and the maximization thereof, bring to mind a gem of an essay from Bob Black that I first encountered back in the days when 640K was enough for anyone. Dinosaur days. It's called "The Abolition of Work" and I've always assumed that most nerds like me had probably read it but maybe not. It made a big, and lasting impression on me, and I suspect that many here who feel drawn to this HN thread will find the Black piece to have some thought-provoking ideas in it.

"No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution."

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolit...

Thanks for the recommendation, especially these days that I'm really deep into Anarchist literature :)

Also Brian Eno, urging people not to get a job: https://youtu.be/d-53tzx69fM

The reality of the sickness is our lifestyle. Humans are not wired to sit in a fluorescent office for 8 hours a day staying at a screen. Humans are designed to build physical tools and persistence hunt wild beasts on the plains of Africa and the Eurasian steppe.

Decades of sitting down and staring at a screen in that office is bound to start to deep into someone's mental health at some point.

No amount of therapy, vanity spending, grindset mentality, family support, or PTO can fully fix the mental wound that a deeply unnatural lifestyle inflicts on a person. Those are all bandaids on a gaping bullet wound that is most likely permanent.

Tired of hearing these hackernews biohackers and their silly blog-inspired solutions to life satisfaction. It's time to wake up and realize that there is no way to achieve the type of satisfaction they are claiming they can achieve in the modern world.

Here's my ultimate advice that I myself am not following as I should: get off the Internet and social media. Our brains are tribal, and we're not meant to be constantly inundated with news from the other tribes. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I have realized that a lot of my unhealthy fears, wants, desires, etc. are triggered by things like Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. LinkedIn may be the most unhealthily triggering these days.

Any benefit, like hearing about something I hadn't before, is overwhelmed by the negatives. If I instead spent all this time reading my unread books, I'd have a lot more discovery anyway, without any of the social media shame, pity, and jealousy.

I am not quite old enough for a midlife crisis, but suffered a period of extreme burn out which was followed by some kind of crisis/breakdown and I am actively in the process of destroying my life and everything good I worked for.

I at this point both hope that I'm still here to experience a "midlife" crisis and that it isn't even half as bad as this has been.

"Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research."

- Carl Jung

WTF are you talking about? "crisis", it's such western cliche. You actually start living after 40.

Throw away ID,

as a a peasant who has grown from being very poor in a third world country and currently living in a first world country with acceptable lifestyle, this is poor idea to myself because mid life crisis is only for people who are rich, the poor are too busy trying to live rather than changing it.

This is an interesting read, because I turned 40 this year and I have been struggling, I didn't expect to feel this way, but I also never really understand or registered the magnitude of turning 40 was, I never really processed that I had somehow grown old and I was still just drifting through life, living like I was 20.

What is the process for not wasting such Crisis though? I feel part of the reason why I am in this position in the first place, is I never am able to make sense of any of such times, I just struggle through it and eventually it goes away a little bit. Every time I try to figure anything out, I get stuck in overthinking and I don't really know what options are available to me anyway.

Perhaps the best way to navigate such a time of uncertainty is to recognize that you're not even aware of the spectrum of options, and to be open-minded/observing what kind of options are possible. This looks like saying "yes" to an unusual invitation, reading a book in a new genre, doing something mildly out of character - to see what kind of new thing might happen as a consequence. And it doesn't have to be serious, it's "just for research" ;-)

I 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.

I’ve always thought midlife crisis was a weird thing. Nobody knows when they’ll die. Maybe you die in an avalanche at 24. At which point you probably should have reassessed your life and assumptions at 12. Or maybe you die in a car accident at 18. Or a house fire at 32. Maybe you’re gunned down by the husband of the lady you’re sleeping with at 74.

If there’s any benefit from a midlife crisis you should probably get on it today. Nobody knows the hour and manner of his end. You might have missed your midlife already!

In this context, midlife describes a time period in human development not the actual midpoint of one's life.

> If there’s any benefit from a midlife crisis you should probably get on it today. Nobody knows the hour and manner of his end.

I completely agree.

This isn't reassuring, it's depressing. God we truly are cursed aren't we? Being born into this meat grinder is not worth it and we are unlucky to be here.

The awareness of the innevitability of death can actually be freeing and help give more depth to life. For instance Maranasati practices in most branches of Buddhism or the "Memento Mori" of the romans and middle age christians. I am actually even convinced that death, even with all the pain and despair it brings, is necessary for beauty and mystery. And I say this as someone who had several close relatives dying recently and went through grief and accompanying the grief of others.

Midlife crisis might actually be an example of that: "why am I waste my time? It is limited, I need to make something meaningful" would likely not be a common thought if we were immortal. You cannot waste what is in infinite supply.

(Note that this is a theme one finds in Buddhist cosmology: birth in the human realm is seen as better than birth in the heavenly realms, where life is so long it is essentially infinite, because it is human mortality that helps getting the drive to study the Buddhas teachings to end the cycle of rebirth. Very refreshing idea if compared to classical conceptions of the Christian paradise)

This is inspiring!

I am 37(male) going though one and its certainly has its up and downs. Maybe a few here can let me know what field I should break into.

I am Sr developer in the industry for a decade. Regular dev shop and manage 3-4 direct reports and play the senior tech role for a couple of projects at any given time. I enjoy working with code but much less so then years ago.

I have a LOT of personality (meeting new people, selling myself, etc.) that I sadly don't get to us at all in my current position. I went to a work conference in DC back in February and talked to strangers non-stop for three days. I loved every minute of it. I am getting bored being at a desk all day and would rather use my personality in my work. I have my past in the technical and want to use my personality to make money now. I know there has to be a place where that's an advantageous combo. I am not afraid to take a pay-cut in transition. My company will hopefully be acquired soon so I should be able to do some hunting.

Any advice on what I should pursue? Welcome to suggestions and any private message etc with suggestions. Thanks!

I think a more reduced and perhaps more broadly applicable version is to never waste pain. It can propel you just like the promise of reward can. They’re opposite sides of the same coin.

When I was 38, I took upon a challenge to start my 40s on a high. The challenge was simple. I would run 40 half marathons before turning 40.

Before this, I was running occasionally.

For about 18 months, I ran 2-3 half marathons every month and completed my challenge. By the time I reached 40, I was in the best shape of my life. Also, I figured out that my mind and body can now take any challenge and complete it.

I turned 41 in June and already ran more than 70 half marathons and one full marathon (Copenhagen full marathon).

How can I prepare for this ? A lot of the comments mention work, which I’ve already chosen to give less importance in my life, money, which I make enough of for now, family, which I don’t have for now but in progress and overall « meaning of life », which I’m I no investigating almost daily.

I’ve accepted humans are not meant to know what’s up, otherwise we’d know by now. It’s all about the journey one could say. So yeah.

Any other tips ?

I'm not sure I understand what exactly the advice is. Is it just "don't be afraid to do something risky, as you might regret not going for it"? That doesn't seem helpful to me, I can easily regret doing something I really wanted to do before.

"I can be penniless or I can be bitter." Why not both? If I try something risky and fail and end up penniless, I'll be penniless and bitter.

That's true. I agree that taking big financial risks, especially later in life, is not necessarily the best advice. Risk is relative though. Plenty of people in this thread talking about programming projects they've been working on for years and have rewritten multiple times, never releasing anything. What would have been the risk in releasing something earlier?

I have a friend who is a musician. He obsessed over individual songs that he produces for months, and doesn't release very much. I think he has this idea that he's going to be hugely successful someday, but I keep telling him, I think you would build more of a following if you released more of your work. The worst that could happen is that people don't like it that much, but there's something about getting used to putting yourself out.

There are also people who dream of a better work environment and never apply for other jobs. It can be risky to just quit your job when you have a family to care for, but it's often possible to interview in other places without leaving your current job.

Creative endeavors can be especially difficult because it can mean lots of work with very little chance of financial success. You really have to enjoy the process itself (or at least find a healthy balance between the creation and business sides of it). If you do, there's not much risk, you'll get enjoyment out of it at least. But you really have to be honest with yourself about your expectations. (That is, even if you tell yourself you're doing it for fun, but you're secretly still planning to "make it big", you're probably setting yourself up for disappointment.)

> 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. And that was ten years ago! And I’m still going.

Funny how people never seem to ask the folks who turned out penniless whether it was a good strategy

I read the book Midlife: A Philosophical Guide by Kieran Setiya. I found it interesting and helpful.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691173931/mi...

"If you just waste it on like a car, it’s just a lack of imagination. Mine was the decision to write books and attempt to make a living there."

Becoming a novelist is as cliche as trading in your car and wife for newer models. But as someone whose been dead-broke before, I'd pick bitter any say.

To take into cosideration: midlife crisis sometimes happens at 40, mine happened at 50. Don't ever think you are going to get away. The realization that there are more years behind your back than in front of you is huge and it will come.

Kind of like industry -> PhD decision.

This stinks a bit of survivors bias, for every successful person who tried "built it and they will come" there are 1000 people who failed and had to go back to whatever they came from

Podcast discussion of this topic from Freakonomics:

Are You Having a Midlife Crisis?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQzxEC-qbU4

As a risk averse person when I read this: "Penniless certainly beats bitter" all I can think of is; ending up penniless just makes you penniless AND bitter

Does anyone have any suggestions for good workbooks for planning ones way towards big long term things like the life change goals that come out of a midlife crisis?

Emacs, definitely. Org roam.

Someone else in this thread mentioned a Scanner day book?

boy is this text shallow and lazy ... no way this is accurately priced at floor(pi*100) points. also the guy is falling for survivor ship bias. very shallow.

having said that. midlife crisis is at the end of the day about facing mortality. so that's what you need to do. face it. realize you are going to die. you don't know when and there is nothing you can do about it except for living now.

Been there! Big depression at 40, now fully focused on video game dev and that really saved me.

The only way 40 is midlife is if you spent your life so far behind a desk.

That's going to be quite a lot of people. It is also pretty spot on if thinking in life expectancy terms.

> Penniless certainly beats bitter.

That sounds like a good mantra to motivate oneself.

Unless you’ve ever been truly penniless. Being bitter beats the true terror of forcing your family to live in a shelter.

That can certainly happen and it is truly scary, not arguing about that.

I think what most people here on HN mean by 'penniless' is living with their parents and having no disposable income, or some other stressful arrangement. Something that their (perhaps former) friends and acquaintances would consider an embarrassing failure.

Yep I've just started my mid life crisis at 31...

Wait until 40. It hits harder.

Not every midlife assessment leads to a crisis.

Midlife crisis is simply myth. It is a description of the long awaited convergence of money and youthful desires.

Additionally, middle age starting is not robustly defined by your 30s. It varies across cultures. In the UK, having kids much later and having adolescence dragged out due to education and lower wage years is very normal. This is also due in part to life expectancy shifts, and the period of middle age for boomers extending far longer than many realised.

> Midlife crisis is simply myth. It is a description of the long awaited convergence of money and youthful desires.

You say it's a myth but then just aptly described it in a way that makes it seem inevitable.

Terrible advice. Survivor bias.

what is waste?

Never waste the chance to comment "but survivorship bias"

Totally agree. When he started saying "just write books and readers will come" I had to think about https://xkcd.com/1827/

Not to say that all he says is rubbish. "Pennyless beats bitter" is a good heuristic and shows that he does not claim that it could not have gone south.

well now I hear this :(

I 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.

You could be on the right course but still unsatisfied with your achievements. This is probably pretty common.

But you've figured out what 20 year old and 30 year old you wanted, not necessarily what 40 year old you wants.

I was shocked by the cookie cutter midlife crisis I had upon hitting 40 despite thinking I was doing all the right things before that.

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?

I had strong convictions about the things I would be doing and achieving in my 40s. The responsibilities that I actually had in my life were in direct conflict with that though. Initially I tried to do it all and just felt like a failure on all fronts. It wasn't until I accepted that I had way less control in life than I imagined that I was able to let go of the things I thought I should be doing and instead embrace and enjoy the things I needed to be doing.

This approach seems wise, and to an extent I've tried to follow it as well. "Learn from other people's mistakes" - for me this has always seemed natural, and in a sense I've been fortunate to have some good learning opportunities.

One complication is that we all follow different paths through life; those older people didn't get to where they are by going further down the same path you're on.

It's not just about missing out on what you want: it's also achieving it and wondering, "is that all there is?"

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.

Yeah but the point about the crisis is realising that maybe your chosen destination was a mistake you made based on incomplete information, or else you've arrived and it's not what you imagined it would be so now what do you do?

No one has 100% agency, you don't always have a rudder, sometimes the wind capsizes your boat and you drown to death. Sometimes you had to compromise so much that the end result doesn't satisfy you. That's what a midlife crisis is after all. A lot of people did their best, and are still unhappy with the outcome because luck plays a huge role in life.

Some people don't even get boats my friend, they have to try and succeed on a plank of driftwood. I hope you don't have a midlife crisis either, but chances are pretty high your not going to end up exactly where you thought you would be, and hey maybe that ends up being a good thing. Maybe your horizon was okay but you actually lucked into something you loved more.

The assumption here is changing course is a bad thing? And what defines changing course?

Also how do you know what your 40 or 60 year old brain will think when you are 20?

If our brains thought the same things and had the same world view this would be evolutionarily a disadvantage. Just brain chemistry changes alone could account for a lot of decisions. At a crude level it makes more sense to be sex and love obsessed in 20s when the chance of having a good sperm, eggs and pregnancy is much higher.

Elder members of the group help genetic survival by providing wisdom, knowledge of a different kind than younger people (I don't believe "older people know better") but the blends of knowledge are great for survival.

The assumption that we are purely rational agents making informed choices is clearly false in general, and I think the opposite is true, in general.

And this doesn't even tough on the extra information you would have processed over 20 years or even the freakingly high speed of change of the world around us. Would you choose to learn about Machine Learning / Neural Nets in 2000? Or coding in 1980? Well you could if it is a passion, but it didn't look as promising as now right? So data changes.

There are too many unknowns and uncertainties to consider anyone's life choices a failure. Don't fall victim to the illusion of control.

I'm in my 40s and haven't had one, but I've also never really figured out what I want my life to be like. In truth the question was always more what do I want to do right now? What you want life to be like will continually change, and to me, it seems like those who don't accept that end up disappointed.

I'm currently in a transition period, seeing if changing course from my present occupation is possible. I did the same in my 20s and 30s without difficulty, though it gets harder as you age. If I can good, but if I can't, then it's still ok. Make the best of what's available and enjoy what you have.

Life is a long series of decisions and then you're dead. What you do doesn't really matter, even if the pressing weight of it right now says otherwise. Make life choices that won't pigeonhole you and be open to opportunities you may not expect.

I think you're also falling a bit for one of the common fallacies people who have midlife crises have, the idea that there's something wrong with changing the direction of your life at 40, that it somehow means you've failed.

Having helped a couple of people going through that sort of phase, a pretty useful tool I found was to have them think about how much the world has changed in even just 20 years. So, given that, it isn't really that big of a deal that at 40 you might want to do something completely different from when you were 20, simply because your current life is almost entirely different to what it was 20 years ago.

We're long past the times when several generations of people would live and die doing the same thing without seeing any meaningful change in lifestyle and so it isn't that big of a deal if that also reflects in our own life choices.

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