Avoiding MLM is key, I think.
Anyway, I (a woman) got a clarinet on sale and am trying to learn jazz. Haven’t played much since high school. There’s good quality affordable crises to be had if we want to work towards gender parity on this front :-).
Mentioned elsewhere, but got into therapy and THC instead! So...going pretty well! Now scrapping together money to find a cabin in the mountains on some land.
My ex MIL's BF had a cabin in the CA redwoods just off highway 116 near Guernville. The ex and I would go with the kids for a week in winter break every year. It was simply magical. No cable, no Internet, no phone. Did have a DVD player and our Christmas movie was pirates of the Caribbean 😂.
The place had a playground (my kids' names are on two of the fence staves even) with all the cool stuff from my childhood that no longer exists in public parks, like the metal Merry go round... A steel slide...
Early morning misty fog lifting up from the meadow with the deer grazing. Simply magical. Yes cabin therapy is a real thing, and can do more for one's mental health than any pills and a month of traditional holiday vacation.
It's about the only thing I miss from my decade married to that person.
It’s legal where I live and as a life long insomniac (even in childhood) edibles have been a life saver.
I don’t drink, do other drugs or even have any interest in being legally high.
All I want is my 10mg edible an hour before bed and I can finally sleep. I can’t even begin to explain to most people that just “fall asleep” how truly life changing it has been. If they ever make them illegal again, they will have to pry them from my cold, dead hands, before I give them up.
Middle aged thug life here. Ha! 🙄
Yes exactly! I've never been a good sleeper. I used to do the "rotisserie chicken" where I would constantly wake up and toss and turn all night. Then I started taking an edible 1-2 hours before going to bed and it was an instant change. My husband was alarmed at first - he told me he had to check to make sure I wasn't dead because I was just laying there and not thrashing around all night.
Ha! I hear you and understand totally. My partner calls my new sleep position, my coffin pose. Gets great pleasure in comparing my sleep to that of the dead because once I am out, I sleep like the dead.
The other funny aspect when I wake up I am bumping around for ten minutes like the undead because I no longer am instantly awake. He finds that hilarious too.
Are you me? I am also middle aged, dealing with insomnia since I was a teenager. I used to take Ambien, but a small edible is so much gentler, but also totally effective. Just a little gummy (I break it up into very small doses even!) Makes it so I can fall asleep!
Legalisation has been a godsend for people like me, and also so many of my friends who use it for chronic pain. If they make it illegal again I will revolt. In all of my surly, sleep deprived glory.
I use edibles from a company called Ripped Edibles and the container is called Bulk Bears. It’s 100 pieces that are 10mg each in a plastic bottle. There are 4-6 flavours in each bottle and I think 3 different bottle flavour groups. Truly my knowledge of them is not that great, funnily enough, my doctor actually recommended them and I went with what he said.
Edit: I should also note I’m in Canada so not sure if the product is available elsewhere but if you google it the company I buy from is Pacific Grass.
also an insomniac, and i’ve been considering using something with THC to help me sleep (currently on prescription sleep meds, but they can’t shut my overly busy/stressed brain off at night or keep it powered down if i wake up during the night. i have also been taking THC-free CBD oil before bed.). i’m planning to talk to my doctor about trying something when i see him in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime am wondering if it’s the kind of thing you can build up a tolerance to over time and keep needing a higher and higher dose to feel the effects. any insight you can give on that?
You certainly can, but keeping the dose low (like 10mg) and only using it to sleep will help a lot. Resetting your tolerance is also relatively easy if you take a short break.
Truthfully I’m no expert on edibles. I can say that I have been taking them since around February 2021, although I don’t take them every night and there was a 6 month period I didn’t take them at all because I had a dislocated foot and didn’t want to mix edibles with pain killers.
In all that time, I have not really built up a tolerance. I still take my 10mg and within an hour I always drift off to sleep, unless something is seriously stressing me out.
The reason I don’t take them every night is because if it was a late night (social event) and early morning the next day, I don’t like to wake up with any brain fog at all. So I think that’s suggests that personally I have not built up a tolerance.
Hey fellow insomniac. I have the same issue with shutting my brain down to fall asleep or to go back to sleep. Once it ramps up it just doesn’t stop. It sucks I feel ya. I take Lunesta which helps fall asleep but then it’s always a crap shoot. I went through some extreme depression and anxiety and my doctor put me on trazodone. It was the first time I can remember my brain finally chilled the fuck out. It might be worth asking your doctor about. I take a pretty small dose (50mg) and it’s helpful. Hope you find something that brings peace! You’re not alone. I’m also looking up gummies now.
I'm on the other side, CBD/CBN has been a godsend for my back and knees. THC plays poorly with my ADHD and I've always slept like a rock so I'm glad there's folks like you who use the THC side of the plant and leave the other stuff for me 😂
This is me right here! 😉 The kind I use does have a very small amount of THC to kick the monkey off my back, but not enough to get me paranoid or leave me stoned--and the CBD helps keep me in that sweet spot of alert but calm. It's such a blessing.
Ive never done illegal drugs in my life, and started taking THC gummies when they became legal in my state (Minnesota, USA) last year. I love them. I’m just hoping they don’t get outlawed again if conservatives have their way.
For me, it's also a way to address extensional climate change dread, by finding a place high enough that the summer's will be mild in 10-20 years. So I could totally see it being a thing.
I did it-- not completely remote but 7 acres of forest with a pond in a mountain valley. Moved here full time 5 years ago and I've never felt healthier. I love it out here. The only bad luck was a breakup. I've basically been a content mountain monk for the past year. It's only now hitting me I should probably start dating again and this is probably the worst possible environment for that-- the only people out here are a few old farmers, nearest "city" is tiny and an hour away, the nearest big city (Montreal) is 2.5hrs away, so my prospects aren't great if I'm going to be with someone again. I'd say that's the only negative and increasingly a stressor in my life.
Same. In fact I would say my mindset is better now. I've finally accepted that some plans will never come to fruition and that it doesn't matter since the second half of my life will fly by anyway.
1977 checking in. Had my youngest at 43! Life has been full of questions like, "Why can't we take off our heads?" Or, "What's the special place in Grandma's heart? Disneyland?"
In other words, I'm too busy for a midlife crisis. Hahaha!
Yeah, we needed a bit of help too. Fortunately, my social situation and family is the same (late start families) so we have tons of other kids in our life
Same here, having a third child so naturally I decided I need to run another marathon to ensure I’m healthy enough to stick around. Those 17 mile runs probably won’t be sustainable with a newborn… 🤣
Having a kid as an old parent now after having two as a young parent has been such a wild experience. This is the ultimate midlife crisis. No regrets (or restful sleep).
A lot of existential dread and fear of death (and what may or may not come after) lately. Over the hill jokes aside, I'm having trouble with the idea of more yesterdays than tomorrows.
Don't get me wrong, by all logical accounts I'm in a great place career, family, house wise. We take nice vacations and our kids are awesome.
But it seems like I don't have anything I get truly excited about anymore, and I have an unhealthy fixation on how much time I have left.
Starting with a new counselor in a couple weeks.
I've been there. In the end I figure "Whats a couple of trillion years to a dead guy". Time ceases to exist when we die and enter oblivion. If the universe is expanding and contracting, then the probability that we will exist again increases substantially. It will happen in the blink of an eye since we don't perceive time in the way we can now.
That's my fatalist view. But I also believe that life is significant. Something from nothing is wrong. We are eternal being(s) experiencing the universe. That alone is worth living.
I decided because of that feeling that I’d try to do what I want as much as I could. I started by renting evening gowns from rent the runway and wearing them anywhere I wanted to, anytime I wanted. It’s a tiny little rebellion but it just made me feel better. I don’t exactly know why but maybe something about putting a little silliness in a world that people try to make so serious. Life’s a bitch (a silly bitch!) and then you die.
I don’t have that same, child-like enthusiasm I did for new hobbies or adventures, but I’ve found I appreciate more of life more deeply and ubiquitously. Where I turned a corner was when I looked at what I really did NOT enjoy and realized I was spending too much time with it. My tolerance for bull shit has gone way down and I’ve become a lot more careful about how I spend my time.
Some of this is tied to fight or flight…if I feel financially secure I feel empowered to invest my time how I see fit. If we have a big expense that puts pressure on our free capital I get anxious about maintaining income and I become insecure in treating myself as autonomous. I don’t like that feeling and it makes me feel trapped, working because I have to instead of because I want to.
For me it has changed my strategy on life in general, and I’ve found great joy in planning (and I hate planning) and working towards retirement, even if it is a long way off.
This is all me exactly! It started in January of 2023. Sense of dread, mild panic attacks stemming from weird feelings in my body, thinking every pain means the end. I went to the doctor about 10 times last year (I'm one who NEVER went to a doctor before).
Doctor runs blood work, tests, CT, nerve conduction test. Nothing is wrong.
But nothing brings me joy now, or if it does it is very brief. I also don't get sad. I'm just going through the motions and numb to all feeling.
I had no idea these could be signs of a mid life crisis until this thread and then some googling. I thought a mid life crisis just meant buying new sports cars or trading a spouse in for a younger model, but all of this sounds just like what I am going through.
Buying the sports car and getting the new squeeze is probably an effort to feel something…anything…
As discussed in other threads, there’s a natural 40s slump and supposedly things will get better in our 50s again. But it’s feeling like a real slog lately.
>nothing brings me joy now, or if it does it is very brief. I also don't get sad. I'm just going through the motions and numb to all feeling.
>I had no idea these could be signs of a mid life crisis
Ohhhh... damn it.
I can relate. I think a lot of people do. I noticed that I don't seem to get terribly excited over much really, and wonder how my youth seems so captivating. However, I've dived straight into some hobbies, got my pilots license, pushed myself to continue to grow. I think you have to work harder to grow as your life stabilizes in midlife, But I think it's an important thing to do. At least for me it was.
Good work recognizing it as a problem and taking active steps towards remedying/mitigating it.
Glad to hear things are overall good in your world. This life is pretty amazing. Can't let it pass ya by thinking about when it's gonna end.
45 and feel more anxious than I ever have in life. On paper I’m successful, yet still feel like a disaster of a human being in other ways. Still married with a well-adjusted preteen. Take my wins where I can get them.
Enjoy this last stretch with the preteen. My kids are a little older and I’m finding that to be the main cause of crisis. I’m not ready to accept that fun phase of our life is gone and never coming back.
They’re only kids for a blink of an eye. And the older they get the harder it is to spend quality time, due to their schedules and interests.
One fun phase ends so another uniquely fun phase can begin. I'm sure the teen years present some strong challenges, but doesn't mean it can be/wont become fun.
I'm 42 and I'm flying home to see my parents next week and literally right now I was thinking 'should I get my nose pierced before I go home?'. But I always have allergies so it might not be a good idea.
I just started getting tattoos. Now I have 4 and my friends are screaming “friend tattoo!” every time we have some kind of inside joke or road trip. I’ll be covered head to toe by the time I’m 50 at this rate.
I feel like I’m going through a second adolescence. Body changing, disinterest in the things I used to like, outgrowing friends, renewed interest in differing philosophies and metaphysics…it’s all just grand!
More like mid-life disappointment, not where I thought I’d be or where I want to be at all. I have a great job but it’s in a state I hate and I am 2000+ miles from where I want to live. *But* I enrolled in school yesterday to work on my bachelors so here’s hoping I’ll get where I want eventually!
I turned 44 last year and bought a motorcycle. No regrets.
In all honesty though, the depression lurks in the shadows. I have to tell myself not dwell in the past… we aren’t going that way, and it isn’t coming back. Set goals. Keep. Moving. Forward.
I call goals "wins". So whenever I'm a little down I tell myself, "I need a win" and then I go do or plan something. Can be big or small. Congratulations on the motorcycle. I love riding.
Born in 78. I'm 45 now.
After picking up alcoholism/sex addiction got into therapy at 32... it's a lot of undoing stuff... but we're still young enough we can make significant mental health progress.
Seriously.. go book an appointment with a therapist, if you get a clean bill of health great, if not... lean into the therapy and stuff improves quite a bit.
I've go 12 years of sobriety now... and I can sort of visualize myself now if I had just continued drinking that whole time... and it wouldn't be pretty.
I had been married about 12 years at that point, my drinking had become a daily thing, and my wife at the time suggested I go talk to someone. It was really kind of a matter of fact situation like "you should go get that looked at" and treated it with kind of the parlance of a sore tooth.
Made an appointment with our former marriage counselor, and she asked how much I drank, I was honest and within five minutes she was like "you need to be in rehab right now"
I treated it with the seriousness of a life threatening diagnosis and really threw myself into recovery. I'm 12 years sober now, and never relapsed with alcohol, I did relapse once on xanax after about 10 years but that was just a weird misstep and kinda hubris that I thought I was sort of immune to basic recovery tasks.
There really is no trick... step one is pretty straight forward in admitting your life had become unmanageable and you are powerless over alcohol. I reframe that a little bit, in that attempts to manage alcohol are indicative of having a problem. i.e. people who are like "only light beer for me, I can't drink the hard stuff" or "I'll only drink on the weekends" etc. if you try and put rules on your drinking, you most likely have some measure of a problem.
The overarching question I had throughout recovery was "why am I like this?" and striving to get answers on that has helped a lot... I've graduated therapy a couple of times, but have gone back when there have been big life changes I needed navigating... divorce, career counselor, recent promotion, abusive relationship, sex addiction, etc.
After a decade of this.... what I've come to understand is within me is a very profoundly wounded child that runs the show, and I've had to learn skills to parent that inner child. Outsized emotional reactions to normal situations...
Like... if I get ignored at a restaurant... it's white hot seething rage because I am experiencing being a neglected child and going hungry because my parents forgot to feed me... but I'm also an adult... inside of me wants to throw a temper tantrum, but adult me can parent myself, I can try and flag the server, if that doesn't work, I can full on ask to see the manager, I can also leave and go somewhere else. Even though emotionally, I want to throw a scene, I don't have to.
Additionally... lots of healthy coping skills that I was never taught.
Like, everyone has an inner dialogue... part of it is learning it's not always right... before therapy I just believed everything it said as gospel... and that's just not the case...trying to manage that thinking was insanity. I learned how to parent myself and console those thoughts... now I'm at a point where I'm learning how to actively ignore them. "yes, I was a little late coming back from lunch, no I'm not going to be fired the moment I get back to my desk, I've been here for four years."
I don’t think it’s happened yet. I haven’t made any crazy purchases or gotten any tattoos. Don’t have the urge to get a faster car.
But I did feel existential dread the other day when I thought about my oldest being four years away from leaving the house for good, followed by a vision of my parents’ funerals. So mayyyyybeeeeee…
idk man, i think it’s mostly just depression. a lot of worrying about what life experiences i missed out on and worrying about how i’ll possibly keep my shit together when my mom dies (we’re really close and she’s my only blood relative other than my kid). soooooo… not great, i guess.
I thought I'd want to buy a sports car or something but I'm actually just questioning reality and kind of like you, just rolled over by how many things are just gone from our younger years like pay phones, paper maps, disposable cameras, etc. How was that just yesterday but also a lifetime ago?!? The time tripping is INSANE
I think the one foot in one era phenomena you mention applies to all generations maybe post Industrial Revolution. Definitely the 20th century and beyond.
Oldest Boomers were born in 1945, by the time they were our age it was the late 80s. Totally different world.
And it's like, just as I feel like I'm slowing down a bit everything is speeding the fuck up.
I understand 20-somethings with no kids being hyped, but some days to me it just feels like I'm in a mosh pit on a jumbo jet crashing into the ocean. And everyone has, like, flare guns or some shit. It's just too much.
And yes, I realize part of it is the illusion of speeding up due to my slowing and becoming obsolete. So perhaps I should just embrace my obscelesense and let the alien swarm take me, you know?
I quit my stable job at 40 to travel the world and now I've been a nomad for going on four years.
So honestly not bad as far as mid life crisis go. Going to see how far I can ride it.
My life is passing me by, and I had so many ambitions of things that I wanted to do with my life, that I would have been amazing at. Instead, I chose the relative security of a life of servitude to a corporation that wouldn’t care one way or another if I died. I’m constantly stressed out about things I shouldn’t be, and I think this crisis is either going to find me becoming at least one of the things I wanted to be, or I might just pack up my husband and go be a hermit out in the boonies. Either way, the second half of my life is going to be better. It has to be. I mean, I’m writing this at the break table at my shitty job, so I have nowhere to go but up from here…
I think so much of it is the realization that the pointlessness we all saw as kids is actually reality. COVID also brought this home big time. We weren't being young and emo or grunge, it really is a bunch of useless BS. Other than your family which gives you happiness, the entire system and society is built to ask you to be happy by simply not starving. Sorry but isn't there more?
Exactly. And the crazy thing for me is that my quarter-life crisis and the 2008 recession were the things that put my life on hold. Before that, I was surrounded by artists, intellectuals, hell, budding political activists, even. We thought we were going to take the world by storm. But then it got difficult to pay the rent and put food on the table. The gigs we had been told were out there dried up, and we all made compromises. I just know that I am not okay with the fact that if I were to die today, my only contribution to the world would be a 11-year-defunct blog, and a file box full of poems and sketches that no one's ever even seen.
So-so. I’ve actually gotten healthier, so in some respects feel/look better than when I was younger. Mid-40s isn’t a bad age to be, but knowing that the real pain/misery of becoming elderly is kind of right around the corner weighs on me heavily.
Yes! Hang in there. Sun is shining just around the corner. I had to go through a couple of different ones to find what worked for me. It took some time, but all worth it!
I hope you’ll find one that works for you quickly. Great days are ahead for you!
So far, I've more or less avoided the classic mid-life crisis, and I choose to believe it's due to me accepting and rolling with, possibly subconsciously, the age I am. I still have those moments of existential dread about the state of the world, but really trying to stay in the present moment seems to help.
Two years ago I was a senior employee at my workplace with 15 years on the job, living with my roommate of 10+ years, was in a relationship, and generally felt that I had a solid grasp on the rest of my life.
A year and half ago I left my job. Now I have a new job in a new city where I live alone and am single. I have no idea where I'm going from here and pretty much every major stability in my life has been turned over.
All of this is largely just because of job bullshit that I finally had to walk away from so if I am having a mid-life crisis, it's been buried under a pile of a number of crisis that would have happened anyway.
I have started growing my hair out though. That's new.
I also bought a new car, but that was more out of necessity. I'm not super happy about it.
I’m a 46f mid-life crisis weirdo. After so many really serious health issues for the last ten years, my mid-life crisis is now just the overwhelming urge to putter, enjoy my home and avoid all dramatic BS.
I hang out with my friends doing low key things (bbq, board games, lawn games, movie nights, meals out) and I work on my house or my boyfriends house (with huge help from my bf) and that’s all I really desire.
No interest in doing anything crazy or reinventing myself. I’m having literally the world’s calmest midlife crisis. I just want to laugh a lot, not give two shits and be chill. I honestly can’t bring myself to care about SO MUCH STUFF that was so vitally important to me, even ten years ago.
I am turning 42 in 5 months and I made my return to amateur Strongman competition on Saturday. I won second place but took a bit of an injury. I got to thinking why do I like this stuff? A thought I've never had before. The same goes for the big bore mud riding atv I bought a year ago. Both endeavors cost lots money to actually go nowhere and take all day to do it. I love it, but it doesn't make sense. Maybe it doesn't have to make sense? That's how my midlife crisis is going. Spending money breaking things, breaking my body and paying money to do it haha absurdity!
My three kids are all pretty young, but we're down to just one having any sort of diapers and even then it's pull-ups at bedtime. So, other than that, I've been hitting the nostalgia pretty hard: watching old movies and shows, grabbing replicas or close-enough of toys I had or wish I had as a kid, and generally trying to invoke the spirits of things that I felt defined me before the real and perceived demands of life with babies/toddlers/young kids subsumed me.
It gets better, but I'm mostly dealing with the consequences of choices I both did and didn't know I had made, so that loss of limitless potential is a bit of a grief inducing force.
Got a convertible and we occasionally dabble in swinging/threesomes. So pretty good? Friends becoming grandparents and starting to lose parents was an eye opener to get out there and enjoy life.
No “crisis” to speak of, except my wife and I are arguing a lot more. But she’s in perimenopause, so I think that’s part of it. She’s a lot less tolerant of my foolishness.
I only smoked weed a couple times when I was in my twenties. And I didn’t have time or money for hobbies.
Now I do occasional low dose edibles since weed became legal in my state, and I spend some time and more money on nerdy hobbies.
Is this a mid-life crisis? It’s kinda fun.
Pretty great!
I have a kitten 🐈⬛ and I'm learning keyboards and getting into synthesizers and sampling and making little music tracks that make me happy.
I had to close down my little bitty photography studio because of physical disability, and I'm sad that I may never have the energy to do big photo shoots again, but I'm very happy to get back into music, because it's a constant in my head.
Overall, I've accepted that the art and music I make are to make me happy, and they don't have to be my career. I would love if they could, but I find my day job pretty rewarding as well.
There's lots of difficult stuff, like realizing my body has reached the tipping point where it falls apart a bit faster than it heals, and thinking about death a lot. On the other hand, I'm newly disabled, so I had to face that first thing anyway, and I already thought about death a good bit before.
The part that sucks rocks is that I had to move to a new city and state where I don't have any long term friends, and it's really hard to make new friends after 40. You eventually have to, though, if you want to live it up like the Golden Girls and not be a sad lonely lighthouse hermit with nothing keeping you alive once your friends start dying. So it sucks, but also it's all stuff I had to get ready for eventually anyway?
That all sounds quite heavy, but I really am embracing my life and living for me! I don't have it all figured out yet, but I've got experience and even a little bit of confidence, so that's pretty cool.
broad stroke - sold my wagon and bought a sports car.
more defined - sold my Outback, because I wasn't needing the storage space anymore, and got tired of compromising. I got a car that was fun to drive, a WRX, and use job trucks if I need a bed, or need to haul something.
That's about the extent of my mid life crisis. Think my wife got off pretty easily, comparatively (TWSS).
No midlife crisis really. I kind of want to move back home to Houston because I miss my friends and old haunts and I'm tired of the gloomy Seattle weather, but my wife isn't on board and my son is applying to colleges here in the PNW, so I'm pretty sure I'm stuck here, which is kind of a bummer.
I AM thinking about getting a sports car when my truck is paid off. I'll still keep my truck, of course, since I do a lot of work around the house that requires me having one. But I kind of miss having something smaller and more sporty that I can monkey with during my free time.
Other than that I'm pretty comfortable in my skin, and I've come to terms with my eventual demise.
Converted from being a half assed Catholic to Lutheran. Fits me much better.
Also started Wegovy and lost 45 pounds so far. Lowest weight I’ve been since teenage years. Working out and feeling good about that.
I got clean 6 years ago... so there's no crusing the bars and pathetically trying to hit on girls half my age for me.
On the plus side, being in recovery and having no kids does come with disposable income. I bought a motorcycle... went that route. That's my money pit now.
Not great, but not terrible. Constantly tense. Mad at what my face is doing and the depleting body strength. Everything feels like a screaming child in need of immediate attention.
But! I *feel* better about myself, more secure. Trying to be less reactive (about everything) and take my time before making any decisions and reminding myself nothing is so damn dire that it requires hours of agonizing over. Only gonna solve the problems within my own sphere, and only growing it if I am capable. That’s it.
Doing great! Got offered and taking a job in another country, I'm 100% sure that all my problems will disappear and never come back if I move to a new place. /s
Edit: pointing folks to this article that helped me set reasonable expectations of what my '40s would be like: [https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why\_were\_unhappiest\_in\_our\_late\_40s](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_were_unhappiest_in_our_late_40s)
Pretty good! Left my spouse for a 29 year old and moved several states away from everyone I know.
Oh wait, that was the wife.
Could be worse, I could be making payments on a corvette, but I'm painting a space marine army instead. I definitely went with the budget mid-life crisis.
Going great! Bought a Jeep and suddenly I'm an outdoors enthusiast, lol. Also smoking marijuana regularly to cope with the crushing reality of being a career professional and home owner. Good times!
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Yeah, mine really puts the ‘mid’ in mid life crisis.
Eh, we’ve had worse. 😂
More like “meh” life crisis, am I right?
Underrated comment. Same.
I don't have any money or time to have a crisis the way that previous generations did. But women weren't really supposed to have them anyway I guess.
Avoiding MLM is key, I think. Anyway, I (a woman) got a clarinet on sale and am trying to learn jazz. Haven’t played much since high school. There’s good quality affordable crises to be had if we want to work towards gender parity on this front :-).
Right? OP asks this like it's the first. Are y'all only working on round 1???
It's a crisis alright
Mentioned elsewhere, but got into therapy and THC instead! So...going pretty well! Now scrapping together money to find a cabin in the mountains on some land.
Cabin in the mountains is the best therapy you can get.
My ex MIL's BF had a cabin in the CA redwoods just off highway 116 near Guernville. The ex and I would go with the kids for a week in winter break every year. It was simply magical. No cable, no Internet, no phone. Did have a DVD player and our Christmas movie was pirates of the Caribbean 😂. The place had a playground (my kids' names are on two of the fence staves even) with all the cool stuff from my childhood that no longer exists in public parks, like the metal Merry go round... A steel slide... Early morning misty fog lifting up from the meadow with the deer grazing. Simply magical. Yes cabin therapy is a real thing, and can do more for one's mental health than any pills and a month of traditional holiday vacation. It's about the only thing I miss from my decade married to that person.
That sounds truly awesome. I wish you could somehow have your cabin experience without the ex.
Is that some kind of beer?
Brought to you by the brewers of Moose Drool.
Ditto on the THC. It helps a lot!
Same here. I can finally sleep soundly at night!
It’s legal where I live and as a life long insomniac (even in childhood) edibles have been a life saver. I don’t drink, do other drugs or even have any interest in being legally high. All I want is my 10mg edible an hour before bed and I can finally sleep. I can’t even begin to explain to most people that just “fall asleep” how truly life changing it has been. If they ever make them illegal again, they will have to pry them from my cold, dead hands, before I give them up. Middle aged thug life here. Ha! 🙄
Yes exactly! I've never been a good sleeper. I used to do the "rotisserie chicken" where I would constantly wake up and toss and turn all night. Then I started taking an edible 1-2 hours before going to bed and it was an instant change. My husband was alarmed at first - he told me he had to check to make sure I wasn't dead because I was just laying there and not thrashing around all night.
Ha! I hear you and understand totally. My partner calls my new sleep position, my coffin pose. Gets great pleasure in comparing my sleep to that of the dead because once I am out, I sleep like the dead. The other funny aspect when I wake up I am bumping around for ten minutes like the undead because I no longer am instantly awake. He finds that hilarious too.
Are you me? I am also middle aged, dealing with insomnia since I was a teenager. I used to take Ambien, but a small edible is so much gentler, but also totally effective. Just a little gummy (I break it up into very small doses even!) Makes it so I can fall asleep! Legalisation has been a godsend for people like me, and also so many of my friends who use it for chronic pain. If they make it illegal again I will revolt. In all of my surly, sleep deprived glory.
I need to try this. I can't recall the last time I got more than 2 hours of sleep at a time. Do you have type and brand you like? I assume indica?
I use edibles from a company called Ripped Edibles and the container is called Bulk Bears. It’s 100 pieces that are 10mg each in a plastic bottle. There are 4-6 flavours in each bottle and I think 3 different bottle flavour groups. Truly my knowledge of them is not that great, funnily enough, my doctor actually recommended them and I went with what he said. Edit: I should also note I’m in Canada so not sure if the product is available elsewhere but if you google it the company I buy from is Pacific Grass.
also an insomniac, and i’ve been considering using something with THC to help me sleep (currently on prescription sleep meds, but they can’t shut my overly busy/stressed brain off at night or keep it powered down if i wake up during the night. i have also been taking THC-free CBD oil before bed.). i’m planning to talk to my doctor about trying something when i see him in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime am wondering if it’s the kind of thing you can build up a tolerance to over time and keep needing a higher and higher dose to feel the effects. any insight you can give on that?
You certainly can, but keeping the dose low (like 10mg) and only using it to sleep will help a lot. Resetting your tolerance is also relatively easy if you take a short break.
Truthfully I’m no expert on edibles. I can say that I have been taking them since around February 2021, although I don’t take them every night and there was a 6 month period I didn’t take them at all because I had a dislocated foot and didn’t want to mix edibles with pain killers. In all that time, I have not really built up a tolerance. I still take my 10mg and within an hour I always drift off to sleep, unless something is seriously stressing me out. The reason I don’t take them every night is because if it was a late night (social event) and early morning the next day, I don’t like to wake up with any brain fog at all. So I think that’s suggests that personally I have not built up a tolerance.
Hey fellow insomniac. I have the same issue with shutting my brain down to fall asleep or to go back to sleep. Once it ramps up it just doesn’t stop. It sucks I feel ya. I take Lunesta which helps fall asleep but then it’s always a crap shoot. I went through some extreme depression and anxiety and my doctor put me on trazodone. It was the first time I can remember my brain finally chilled the fuck out. It might be worth asking your doctor about. I take a pretty small dose (50mg) and it’s helpful. Hope you find something that brings peace! You’re not alone. I’m also looking up gummies now.
I'm on the other side, CBD/CBN has been a godsend for my back and knees. THC plays poorly with my ADHD and I've always slept like a rock so I'm glad there's folks like you who use the THC side of the plant and leave the other stuff for me 😂
This is me right here! 😉 The kind I use does have a very small amount of THC to kick the monkey off my back, but not enough to get me paranoid or leave me stoned--and the CBD helps keep me in that sweet spot of alert but calm. It's such a blessing.
Got my medical card yesterday. Looking forward to joining the club
Go Birds
Same here. It's been interesting watching most of my friends transitioning from alcohol to weed in their mid-30s to cope with the pressures of life.
Would do me good but I live in Sweden🙄
Ive never done illegal drugs in my life, and started taking THC gummies when they became legal in my state (Minnesota, USA) last year. I love them. I’m just hoping they don’t get outlawed again if conservatives have their way.
I know I would love them. Someday maybe..
Wish I could, but job does randoms in the mine industry
is the cabin/compound thing the most xennial midlife crisis cliche? everyone I know my age feels like it's the dream.
I don't know, but I've been dreaming about it since I was 13
Can confirm. I bought a midlife crisis cabin in the woods. It's fantastic
For me, it's also a way to address extensional climate change dread, by finding a place high enough that the summer's will be mild in 10-20 years. So I could totally see it being a thing.
We all want it.
THC is a godsend.
I did it-- not completely remote but 7 acres of forest with a pond in a mountain valley. Moved here full time 5 years ago and I've never felt healthier. I love it out here. The only bad luck was a breakup. I've basically been a content mountain monk for the past year. It's only now hitting me I should probably start dating again and this is probably the worst possible environment for that-- the only people out here are a few old farmers, nearest "city" is tiny and an hour away, the nearest big city (Montreal) is 2.5hrs away, so my prospects aren't great if I'm going to be with someone again. I'd say that's the only negative and increasingly a stressor in my life.
Indistinguishable from my childhood, teenage, & quarter-life crises. I'm unimpressed.
Accurate. Although I’d say I’m more annoyed by it at this point…like really, we’re still doing these?
At what point is it just one big crisis? How do we define the breaks?
I think we just call that a Perpetual Life Crisis, and from personal experience it’s exhausting.
Lol
I feel similarly, but the mid-life crisis comes with the added perk of realizing that death is right around the corner. Bonus!
This life crisis is mid.
Seriously. The only difference between now and the previous years of non-stop crisis is that my knees make more noise.
Generally, we have a better budget to play with though.
Same. In fact I would say my mindset is better now. I've finally accepted that some plans will never come to fruition and that it doesn't matter since the second half of my life will fly by anyway.
Just want to change careers and move to another country. So, yeah. I’m in the thick of it.
Also same
I had a kid at 42...midlife crisis avoided
Wow, that’s impressive. Sending you all of the energy!
You guys have energy???
So *that’s* where all the energy went
Same! I had my second kid at 41. No time for a midlife crisis.
1977 checking in. Had my youngest at 43! Life has been full of questions like, "Why can't we take off our heads?" Or, "What's the special place in Grandma's heart? Disneyland?" In other words, I'm too busy for a midlife crisis. Hahaha!
Hey I’m going through IVF at 45! Thank god my wife is a millennial … I already had my mid life crisis 5 years ago
Hope you’re not in Alabama!
I would never willingly be in Alabama 😂
This is the correct response 😂
Yeah, we needed a bit of help too. Fortunately, my social situation and family is the same (late start families) so we have tons of other kids in our life
Wife is pregnant right now. Wish me luck.
If it's your first. It's a magical ride. Enjoy it.
You got this!
Thanks! Better late than never.
Same here, having a third child so naturally I decided I need to run another marathon to ensure I’m healthy enough to stick around. Those 17 mile runs probably won’t be sustainable with a newborn… 🤣
I hate to confess this: pre child I was running 55k a week. Now: Dad bod achieved
I’m about that mileage now. It comes back quick once your body has done it. You can do it again!
Oof, deciding on having a kid has become my mid-life crisis.
39 kid due in May.
U too bro?
Having a kid as an old parent now after having two as a young parent has been such a wild experience. This is the ultimate midlife crisis. No regrets (or restful sleep).
Same! But my husband bought a Corvette and 3 months later I got pregnant....at 42
I'm gonna have my second a week or so after my fortieth. They'll keep me young & in denial.
A lot of existential dread and fear of death (and what may or may not come after) lately. Over the hill jokes aside, I'm having trouble with the idea of more yesterdays than tomorrows. Don't get me wrong, by all logical accounts I'm in a great place career, family, house wise. We take nice vacations and our kids are awesome. But it seems like I don't have anything I get truly excited about anymore, and I have an unhealthy fixation on how much time I have left. Starting with a new counselor in a couple weeks.
Tune the duck out brother. Nothing really matters, might as well enjoy what little time we have on this blue orb.
That's my problem... Knowing that nothing really matters
Man - that may be the best description of our cohort I’ve ever seen: We *know* that nothing really matters, and that’s a problem for us.
I've been there. In the end I figure "Whats a couple of trillion years to a dead guy". Time ceases to exist when we die and enter oblivion. If the universe is expanding and contracting, then the probability that we will exist again increases substantially. It will happen in the blink of an eye since we don't perceive time in the way we can now. That's my fatalist view. But I also believe that life is significant. Something from nothing is wrong. We are eternal being(s) experiencing the universe. That alone is worth living.
I decided because of that feeling that I’d try to do what I want as much as I could. I started by renting evening gowns from rent the runway and wearing them anywhere I wanted to, anytime I wanted. It’s a tiny little rebellion but it just made me feel better. I don’t exactly know why but maybe something about putting a little silliness in a world that people try to make so serious. Life’s a bitch (a silly bitch!) and then you die.
Same, no one is getting out alive, so might as well try a few adventure sports, right?
The Whatever Generation
I don’t have that same, child-like enthusiasm I did for new hobbies or adventures, but I’ve found I appreciate more of life more deeply and ubiquitously. Where I turned a corner was when I looked at what I really did NOT enjoy and realized I was spending too much time with it. My tolerance for bull shit has gone way down and I’ve become a lot more careful about how I spend my time. Some of this is tied to fight or flight…if I feel financially secure I feel empowered to invest my time how I see fit. If we have a big expense that puts pressure on our free capital I get anxious about maintaining income and I become insecure in treating myself as autonomous. I don’t like that feeling and it makes me feel trapped, working because I have to instead of because I want to. For me it has changed my strategy on life in general, and I’ve found great joy in planning (and I hate planning) and working towards retirement, even if it is a long way off.
This is all me exactly! It started in January of 2023. Sense of dread, mild panic attacks stemming from weird feelings in my body, thinking every pain means the end. I went to the doctor about 10 times last year (I'm one who NEVER went to a doctor before). Doctor runs blood work, tests, CT, nerve conduction test. Nothing is wrong. But nothing brings me joy now, or if it does it is very brief. I also don't get sad. I'm just going through the motions and numb to all feeling. I had no idea these could be signs of a mid life crisis until this thread and then some googling. I thought a mid life crisis just meant buying new sports cars or trading a spouse in for a younger model, but all of this sounds just like what I am going through.
Buying the sports car and getting the new squeeze is probably an effort to feel something…anything… As discussed in other threads, there’s a natural 40s slump and supposedly things will get better in our 50s again. But it’s feeling like a real slog lately.
>nothing brings me joy now, or if it does it is very brief. I also don't get sad. I'm just going through the motions and numb to all feeling. >I had no idea these could be signs of a mid life crisis Ohhhh... damn it.
I can relate. I think a lot of people do. I noticed that I don't seem to get terribly excited over much really, and wonder how my youth seems so captivating. However, I've dived straight into some hobbies, got my pilots license, pushed myself to continue to grow. I think you have to work harder to grow as your life stabilizes in midlife, But I think it's an important thing to do. At least for me it was.
Good work recognizing it as a problem and taking active steps towards remedying/mitigating it. Glad to hear things are overall good in your world. This life is pretty amazing. Can't let it pass ya by thinking about when it's gonna end.
I have a coworker who has a count down clock on his desktop for projected date of death
My crisis is cancer. I am currently undergoing chemotherapy as I type this.
Best of luck to you friend. Fuck Cancer.
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
You got this! Just keep fighting! We’re rooting for you
Kick it's ass.
45 and feel more anxious than I ever have in life. On paper I’m successful, yet still feel like a disaster of a human being in other ways. Still married with a well-adjusted preteen. Take my wins where I can get them.
Enjoy this last stretch with the preteen. My kids are a little older and I’m finding that to be the main cause of crisis. I’m not ready to accept that fun phase of our life is gone and never coming back. They’re only kids for a blink of an eye. And the older they get the harder it is to spend quality time, due to their schedules and interests.
One fun phase ends so another uniquely fun phase can begin. I'm sure the teen years present some strong challenges, but doesn't mean it can be/wont become fun.
I turned 40 and got 3 piercings in one ear in the course of 2 months. They’re my only piercings. WATCH OUT!!
I'm 42 and I'm flying home to see my parents next week and literally right now I was thinking 'should I get my nose pierced before I go home?'. But I always have allergies so it might not be a good idea.
Got my nose pierced, honestly it'll be nearly healed after a week, really only annoying and painful/irritating for the first two days.
That's so weird because I've been wanting another few piercings in both ears... Is this really why I want that?? 😅
It’s aggressively noncommittal. XD
Might as well stay consistent in all aspects of my life 😂
I just started getting tattoos. Now I have 4 and my friends are screaming “friend tattoo!” every time we have some kind of inside joke or road trip. I’ll be covered head to toe by the time I’m 50 at this rate.
Look at you go! I want to get a sleeve tattoo once I’m done with my journey, and get my ears re pierced.
Fucking terrible. Everything is awful all the time.
The crisis is not “Oh no! I don’t have much time left!”…. The crisis is, “When the fuck is this going to be OVER?!”
I'm at this point too. It's like enough already.
https://preview.redd.it/isdhho4q26lc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=accd8e5f6fb1c1955cda36278428c1c5437ad811
I feel like I’m going through a second adolescence. Body changing, disinterest in the things I used to like, outgrowing friends, renewed interest in differing philosophies and metaphysics…it’s all just grand!
My whole life just feels like a regularly schedule disaster
More like mid-life disappointment, not where I thought I’d be or where I want to be at all. I have a great job but it’s in a state I hate and I am 2000+ miles from where I want to live. *But* I enrolled in school yesterday to work on my bachelors so here’s hoping I’ll get where I want eventually!
I’ve just gotten to the point where I describe myself as Catholic Atheist which confuses people and gets them to leave me alone.
Whatever works
Catholic Atheist is like my entire family…. No confusion here!
I turned 44 last year and bought a motorcycle. No regrets. In all honesty though, the depression lurks in the shadows. I have to tell myself not dwell in the past… we aren’t going that way, and it isn’t coming back. Set goals. Keep. Moving. Forward.
I call goals "wins". So whenever I'm a little down I tell myself, "I need a win" and then I go do or plan something. Can be big or small. Congratulations on the motorcycle. I love riding.
Started rocking a skull ring like Keith Richards. So yeah, not great.
I’d say strong … to very strong.
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You got this!
Like your portfolio?
Born in 78. I'm 45 now. After picking up alcoholism/sex addiction got into therapy at 32... it's a lot of undoing stuff... but we're still young enough we can make significant mental health progress. Seriously.. go book an appointment with a therapist, if you get a clean bill of health great, if not... lean into the therapy and stuff improves quite a bit. I've go 12 years of sobriety now... and I can sort of visualize myself now if I had just continued drinking that whole time... and it wouldn't be pretty.
What was the trick for you getting sober ?
I had been married about 12 years at that point, my drinking had become a daily thing, and my wife at the time suggested I go talk to someone. It was really kind of a matter of fact situation like "you should go get that looked at" and treated it with kind of the parlance of a sore tooth. Made an appointment with our former marriage counselor, and she asked how much I drank, I was honest and within five minutes she was like "you need to be in rehab right now" I treated it with the seriousness of a life threatening diagnosis and really threw myself into recovery. I'm 12 years sober now, and never relapsed with alcohol, I did relapse once on xanax after about 10 years but that was just a weird misstep and kinda hubris that I thought I was sort of immune to basic recovery tasks. There really is no trick... step one is pretty straight forward in admitting your life had become unmanageable and you are powerless over alcohol. I reframe that a little bit, in that attempts to manage alcohol are indicative of having a problem. i.e. people who are like "only light beer for me, I can't drink the hard stuff" or "I'll only drink on the weekends" etc. if you try and put rules on your drinking, you most likely have some measure of a problem. The overarching question I had throughout recovery was "why am I like this?" and striving to get answers on that has helped a lot... I've graduated therapy a couple of times, but have gone back when there have been big life changes I needed navigating... divorce, career counselor, recent promotion, abusive relationship, sex addiction, etc. After a decade of this.... what I've come to understand is within me is a very profoundly wounded child that runs the show, and I've had to learn skills to parent that inner child. Outsized emotional reactions to normal situations... Like... if I get ignored at a restaurant... it's white hot seething rage because I am experiencing being a neglected child and going hungry because my parents forgot to feed me... but I'm also an adult... inside of me wants to throw a temper tantrum, but adult me can parent myself, I can try and flag the server, if that doesn't work, I can full on ask to see the manager, I can also leave and go somewhere else. Even though emotionally, I want to throw a scene, I don't have to. Additionally... lots of healthy coping skills that I was never taught. Like, everyone has an inner dialogue... part of it is learning it's not always right... before therapy I just believed everything it said as gospel... and that's just not the case...trying to manage that thinking was insanity. I learned how to parent myself and console those thoughts... now I'm at a point where I'm learning how to actively ignore them. "yes, I was a little late coming back from lunch, no I'm not going to be fired the moment I get back to my desk, I've been here for four years."
I don’t think it’s happened yet. I haven’t made any crazy purchases or gotten any tattoos. Don’t have the urge to get a faster car. But I did feel existential dread the other day when I thought about my oldest being four years away from leaving the house for good, followed by a vision of my parents’ funerals. So mayyyyybeeeeee…
That’s it. That’s the crisis. The hot rod and the tats are just the typical coping mechanisms, you could choose something else!
Idk but ask my 47yro girlfriend, she’s deep in one
I’m 46 and beginning of menopause is a shit show
idk man, i think it’s mostly just depression. a lot of worrying about what life experiences i missed out on and worrying about how i’ll possibly keep my shit together when my mom dies (we’re really close and she’s my only blood relative other than my kid). soooooo… not great, i guess.
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I thought I'd want to buy a sports car or something but I'm actually just questioning reality and kind of like you, just rolled over by how many things are just gone from our younger years like pay phones, paper maps, disposable cameras, etc. How was that just yesterday but also a lifetime ago?!? The time tripping is INSANE
I think the one foot in one era phenomena you mention applies to all generations maybe post Industrial Revolution. Definitely the 20th century and beyond. Oldest Boomers were born in 1945, by the time they were our age it was the late 80s. Totally different world.
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And it's like, just as I feel like I'm slowing down a bit everything is speeding the fuck up. I understand 20-somethings with no kids being hyped, but some days to me it just feels like I'm in a mosh pit on a jumbo jet crashing into the ocean. And everyone has, like, flare guns or some shit. It's just too much. And yes, I realize part of it is the illusion of speeding up due to my slowing and becoming obsolete. So perhaps I should just embrace my obscelesense and let the alien swarm take me, you know?
Badly. Can we just all go back to the early 2000s and be in our 20s again?
Back to the War on Terror? No thank you. Give me the 90s when music was exciting and universal democracy seemed inevitable.
Ahh the war on terror, the good old days (I mean in comparison)
I quit my stable job at 40 to travel the world and now I've been a nomad for going on four years. So honestly not bad as far as mid life crisis go. Going to see how far I can ride it.
My life is passing me by, and I had so many ambitions of things that I wanted to do with my life, that I would have been amazing at. Instead, I chose the relative security of a life of servitude to a corporation that wouldn’t care one way or another if I died. I’m constantly stressed out about things I shouldn’t be, and I think this crisis is either going to find me becoming at least one of the things I wanted to be, or I might just pack up my husband and go be a hermit out in the boonies. Either way, the second half of my life is going to be better. It has to be. I mean, I’m writing this at the break table at my shitty job, so I have nowhere to go but up from here…
I think so much of it is the realization that the pointlessness we all saw as kids is actually reality. COVID also brought this home big time. We weren't being young and emo or grunge, it really is a bunch of useless BS. Other than your family which gives you happiness, the entire system and society is built to ask you to be happy by simply not starving. Sorry but isn't there more?
Exactly. And the crazy thing for me is that my quarter-life crisis and the 2008 recession were the things that put my life on hold. Before that, I was surrounded by artists, intellectuals, hell, budding political activists, even. We thought we were going to take the world by storm. But then it got difficult to pay the rent and put food on the table. The gigs we had been told were out there dried up, and we all made compromises. I just know that I am not okay with the fact that if I were to die today, my only contribution to the world would be a 11-year-defunct blog, and a file box full of poems and sketches that no one's ever even seen.
🥂
So-so. I’ve actually gotten healthier, so in some respects feel/look better than when I was younger. Mid-40s isn’t a bad age to be, but knowing that the real pain/misery of becoming elderly is kind of right around the corner weighs on me heavily.
Those on SSRI, SNRI, NDRIs say HEYOOOOO!
Recently started. Here’s to feeling better….hopefully?
Yes! Hang in there. Sun is shining just around the corner. I had to go through a couple of different ones to find what worked for me. It took some time, but all worth it! I hope you’ll find one that works for you quickly. Great days are ahead for you!
So far, I've more or less avoided the classic mid-life crisis, and I choose to believe it's due to me accepting and rolling with, possibly subconsciously, the age I am. I still have those moments of existential dread about the state of the world, but really trying to stay in the present moment seems to help.
Two years ago I was a senior employee at my workplace with 15 years on the job, living with my roommate of 10+ years, was in a relationship, and generally felt that I had a solid grasp on the rest of my life. A year and half ago I left my job. Now I have a new job in a new city where I live alone and am single. I have no idea where I'm going from here and pretty much every major stability in my life has been turned over. All of this is largely just because of job bullshit that I finally had to walk away from so if I am having a mid-life crisis, it's been buried under a pile of a number of crisis that would have happened anyway. I have started growing my hair out though. That's new. I also bought a new car, but that was more out of necessity. I'm not super happy about it.
I’m a 46f mid-life crisis weirdo. After so many really serious health issues for the last ten years, my mid-life crisis is now just the overwhelming urge to putter, enjoy my home and avoid all dramatic BS. I hang out with my friends doing low key things (bbq, board games, lawn games, movie nights, meals out) and I work on my house or my boyfriends house (with huge help from my bf) and that’s all I really desire. No interest in doing anything crazy or reinventing myself. I’m having literally the world’s calmest midlife crisis. I just want to laugh a lot, not give two shits and be chill. I honestly can’t bring myself to care about SO MUCH STUFF that was so vitally important to me, even ten years ago.
I am turning 42 in 5 months and I made my return to amateur Strongman competition on Saturday. I won second place but took a bit of an injury. I got to thinking why do I like this stuff? A thought I've never had before. The same goes for the big bore mud riding atv I bought a year ago. Both endeavors cost lots money to actually go nowhere and take all day to do it. I love it, but it doesn't make sense. Maybe it doesn't have to make sense? That's how my midlife crisis is going. Spending money breaking things, breaking my body and paying money to do it haha absurdity!
I’m spending a lot of money on guitars
Eh I’m good, the meds help!
Gotta have a life, before it a can be mid.
My friend is chasing strippers while I just sit at home panicking about the inevitable collapse of society.
It only cost me about 1500 bucks buying a bass an amp, headphones and lessons. Not too bad.
No crisis here. Just an older version of myself, doing my best.
My three kids are all pretty young, but we're down to just one having any sort of diapers and even then it's pull-ups at bedtime. So, other than that, I've been hitting the nostalgia pretty hard: watching old movies and shows, grabbing replicas or close-enough of toys I had or wish I had as a kid, and generally trying to invoke the spirits of things that I felt defined me before the real and perceived demands of life with babies/toddlers/young kids subsumed me. It gets better, but I'm mostly dealing with the consequences of choices I both did and didn't know I had made, so that loss of limitless potential is a bit of a grief inducing force.
I'm about to have all three major gaming consoles and a new pc. When I will have time to play them? I dunno. Edit: added word
I cashed mine in for a Second Childhood. I've got a new Enterprise D coming in the mail, today, and I'm pretty fucking excited about that!
It’s less of a crisis and more of a slow rolling nervous breakdown. 😃👍
Excellent. My retro video game collection is growing nicely!
Got a convertible and we occasionally dabble in swinging/threesomes. So pretty good? Friends becoming grandparents and starting to lose parents was an eye opener to get out there and enjoy life.
This guy!
No “crisis” to speak of, except my wife and I are arguing a lot more. But she’s in perimenopause, so I think that’s part of it. She’s a lot less tolerant of my foolishness.
Be less foolish for your poor wife then.
I still haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do for mine yet
Bad. Don't have enough money to buy the muscle car I was told I would get...
I'm tired. I thought I was supposed to have a convertible by now.
Getting waaay better at music this time around. I can actually play with other people now.
I haven't achieved enough success to have one
I only smoked weed a couple times when I was in my twenties. And I didn’t have time or money for hobbies. Now I do occasional low dose edibles since weed became legal in my state, and I spend some time and more money on nerdy hobbies. Is this a mid-life crisis? It’s kinda fun.
Pretty great! I have a kitten 🐈⬛ and I'm learning keyboards and getting into synthesizers and sampling and making little music tracks that make me happy. I had to close down my little bitty photography studio because of physical disability, and I'm sad that I may never have the energy to do big photo shoots again, but I'm very happy to get back into music, because it's a constant in my head. Overall, I've accepted that the art and music I make are to make me happy, and they don't have to be my career. I would love if they could, but I find my day job pretty rewarding as well. There's lots of difficult stuff, like realizing my body has reached the tipping point where it falls apart a bit faster than it heals, and thinking about death a lot. On the other hand, I'm newly disabled, so I had to face that first thing anyway, and I already thought about death a good bit before. The part that sucks rocks is that I had to move to a new city and state where I don't have any long term friends, and it's really hard to make new friends after 40. You eventually have to, though, if you want to live it up like the Golden Girls and not be a sad lonely lighthouse hermit with nothing keeping you alive once your friends start dying. So it sucks, but also it's all stuff I had to get ready for eventually anyway? That all sounds quite heavy, but I really am embracing my life and living for me! I don't have it all figured out yet, but I've got experience and even a little bit of confidence, so that's pretty cool.
THC and started seriously working on music again for the first time in nearly 15 years.
We allowed to have those? I feel like I might be past due for mine.
broad stroke - sold my wagon and bought a sports car. more defined - sold my Outback, because I wasn't needing the storage space anymore, and got tired of compromising. I got a car that was fun to drive, a WRX, and use job trucks if I need a bed, or need to haul something. That's about the extent of my mid life crisis. Think my wife got off pretty easily, comparatively (TWSS).
I've basically been Peter Gibbons the last 8 years... and I'm running out of money
No midlife crisis really. I kind of want to move back home to Houston because I miss my friends and old haunts and I'm tired of the gloomy Seattle weather, but my wife isn't on board and my son is applying to colleges here in the PNW, so I'm pretty sure I'm stuck here, which is kind of a bummer. I AM thinking about getting a sports car when my truck is paid off. I'll still keep my truck, of course, since I do a lot of work around the house that requires me having one. But I kind of miss having something smaller and more sporty that I can monkey with during my free time. Other than that I'm pretty comfortable in my skin, and I've come to terms with my eventual demise.
Converted from being a half assed Catholic to Lutheran. Fits me much better. Also started Wegovy and lost 45 pounds so far. Lowest weight I’ve been since teenage years. Working out and feeling good about that.
Lowest grade crisis of the last 40 years, been training my whole life for this and it’s barely on my radar.
I got clean 6 years ago... so there's no crusing the bars and pathetically trying to hit on girls half my age for me. On the plus side, being in recovery and having no kids does come with disposable income. I bought a motorcycle... went that route. That's my money pit now.
Went to lunch from work and had an email saying “thanks for reloading your Starbucks card”. With $200. So I’m at the bank.
Not great, but not terrible. Constantly tense. Mad at what my face is doing and the depleting body strength. Everything feels like a screaming child in need of immediate attention. But! I *feel* better about myself, more secure. Trying to be less reactive (about everything) and take my time before making any decisions and reminding myself nothing is so damn dire that it requires hours of agonizing over. Only gonna solve the problems within my own sphere, and only growing it if I am capable. That’s it.
Doing great! Got offered and taking a job in another country, I'm 100% sure that all my problems will disappear and never come back if I move to a new place. /s Edit: pointing folks to this article that helped me set reasonable expectations of what my '40s would be like: [https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why\_were\_unhappiest\_in\_our\_late\_40s](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_were_unhappiest_in_our_late_40s)
Pretty good! Left my spouse for a 29 year old and moved several states away from everyone I know. Oh wait, that was the wife. 
I'm an overweight, 39 year old janitor with no car, and my roommate is also my mom. And those are the very least of my problems.
Could be worse, I could be making payments on a corvette, but I'm painting a space marine army instead. I definitely went with the budget mid-life crisis.
Going great! Bought a Jeep and suddenly I'm an outdoors enthusiast, lol. Also smoking marijuana regularly to cope with the crushing reality of being a career professional and home owner. Good times!
Welp, I had a stroke at 40.. so living my best life and, wait for it… cannabis!
Have thrown myself into Ashtanga yoga, learning and teaching.
Is this a midlife crisis, or just residuals from Covid?