Okay, so I’m calling it. I think I’m having a midlife crisis. I’ve avoided putting a label on it for a while, but I don’t know what else to call it.
It’s becoming arduous to keep referring to a growing sense of melancholy, dissatisfaction and low-energy as anything else. And that’s what it is. General dissatisfaction. I don’t want to call it unhappiness as such. And it’s definitely not a full blown depression. But it does feel a bit like I’m stuck.
And maybe it’s the trappings of a successful life. A life that by every objective metric would qualify as an absolute success.
I’ve collected the wife. The two kids. And a mortgage to boot.
I’ve got a job that doesn’t demand 80 hours a week. A job that stimulates me intellectually. A job where I have the trust and respect of my colleagues.
I’m not even selling cigarettes to kids. Or pumping cancer into people’s brains.
If I think back to everything that I could have ever wanted as a teenager. When I pictured my perfect life from age 14, this is pretty much exactly it (except the hair).
And I think this is the crux of the problem. The Devil’s bargain.
From as young as I can remember, I’ve been programmed to always be hunting for the next thing. Sure I took the odd fleeting moment to enjoy a job well done. But my first exams at 14, required good grades to get into the right classes for the good grades at the end of high school. High school finals became the gate to unlock college. College grades unlocked the good university. University unlocked grad school.
Grad school… well I guess grad school became a post-doctorate.
Maybe that’s something to ponder…
The last time I’ve ever had this persistent melancholy, malaise and apathy to the world was grad school. Back then, I’d spent the better part of a decade chasing being a renowned scientist so that I could become the tenured professor - and grad school was kicking my ass into submission. The uncomfortable reality was that I knew, even back then, I was an unremarkable scientist. And unremarkable is a generous assessment of situation - I wasn’t even an average scientist.
I didn’t have a backup plan. I had no plan. The plan was complete grad school, postdoc, prof, retire. I had wrapped up so much of my identity in my work and who I was destined to be, I didn’t have anything outside of that. And as my dreams of the ivory tower dissolved, my world unraveled.
Today, it feels like there are echoes.
In the last few days, I’ve mused on the lose of identity as I decided to quit the postdoc after only a year in Israel, and turn my back on academia once and for all. But there, the decision was masked by chasing a girl (now my wife) around the globe.
I remember talking to my boss back in January that I needed to stop treating everything like a knife fight. But I’ve had an entire lifetime of treating everything like a life and death situation. And worse still, I’ve been consistently rewarded for such behaviour.
For the longest time, the solution was always to work harder. I was never the smartest guy in the room, but I knew that I could out-endure the other guy. Grad school was an incubator for such thinking. Getting a bunch of like minded, insecure overachievers together in a space with vague performance metrics (often determined by luck) - ensures that everybody is thinking “I might work hard”. A recipe that ends with everyone working 80 hour weeks.
I swore to myself that I’d never work like that again.
And I haven’t.
But it’s hard.
Having been actively rewarded for such behaviour for years, ingrains deep.
And by ingrain, I actually mean something akin to survivors guilt and trauma.
Now. I find my career slowing. Not necessarily plateauing as yet, but slowing. With enough wisdom to know that I shouldn’t, and just how dangerous it is, to define one’s identity and self worth in one’s work. Yet not having done the work, to know how not to.
I actually Googled for the signs of a midlife crisis earlier this evening - and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Not much to be surprised about.
I quickly became frustrated that apparently this corner of the internet is entirely inhabited by BetterHelp sponsorships telling me that $90/session therapy is the only solution. That or law firms masquerading as self help talking about affairs.
Even when trying to refine for men’s midlife crisis or similar, the entire internet seems to be written for women checking to see if their husband is cheating.
Impressed? I am not.
I can’t help but feel that I am not the only one out there. But these seems like an odd taboo - and I don’t have many friends with more miles on the tyres to quiz for advice.
For now, the only clues that I have to go on is the vague notion that maybe the Stoics and Zen might have something to say on the matter.
Accept and appreciate the moment for what is. Here. Now.
I think my mother would use the idiom: “stopping to smell the roses”.
That will be my next step. Next stop, Amazon to search for the letters of Marcus Aurelius et al. There must be wisdom in the words of a man that have survived two millenia.
But I can’t help but feel like a clock has started ticking somewhere.
My current employer is the longest I have ever stayed in one place since high school. And I don’t want to let restlessness develop into something destructive. As a younger, unrestricted man - the solution was to flee the country, leaving behind a relationship of 7 years, all my friends, all my family. All for the taste of adventure and starting new.
Now, I have responsibilities. People who depend upon me.
And let’s be honest, I don’t want to buy a fucking Porsche.
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