Mid-life crisis sucks.
Here I am, half-way to dead and still nothing much to show for it. I think the only consolation is knowing that you're not the only one, that this particular existential crisis, like the rough teen years, seems to affect all but the most smug and the most ignorant. If you're gearing up right now to tell me it didn't happen to you, all I have to say to you is 'give it time, baby, give it time'. I was a smug non-crisis type only two years ago, then smash, down came the house of cards.
It appears to hit men and women a little differently. I'll give you, oh, three seconds to take another look at this blog post title and decide which set of three applies to men, and which to women...
I decided a few years ago, that hit with the mid-life crisis, men did one of three things - they got that bike they had always wanted, they picked up their guitar again and had another go and being the rockstar they always wanted to be or, they had an affair. Bikes, bands or bitches, and I stand by that 'bitches' because any woman who knowingly sleeps with a man who she KNOWS has a wife and family at home RIGHT NOW is indeed a bitch.
With my man, it was bands, and I remember commenting to another guitar widow, 'Well at least they're not having an affair'. Only the lead singer of one of the bands did have an affair, with a go-go girl, for god's sake, but maybe he's just greedy and is right at this moment in a bike shop somewhere coveting his next piece of eternal youth.
Actually the band thing was a stellar choice, in my opinion, I had a lot of fun with it, revisiting my own teenage punk era and becoming the No.1Groupie. It revitalized our social life, as we had been heading down different roads, me with work colleagues, him with his club, but the band thing we always did either as a couple, or even as a family. While the band fizzled out, we still go out for a date, and go see a band!
And women's crises seems to revolve around beauty, or rather the loss of it, and babies and business, or work, and the balance between them. Haven't had a baby yet? Gotta get one. Or at least obsess a bit about it before deciding you're okay without one. Got one and devoted your life to it? Gotta get back to work! Worked your butt off? Quit and spend more time with the family. Or toss all that and go get a facelift, go on a diet, or buy a new wardrobe, wear shoes that are too high or skirts that are too short just to prove to yourself that you've still 'got it'.
I'm definitely in the 'got to get back to work' camp. Not that I haven't worked all the way through, part-time at least, but in a kind of jobbing around manner, always with the idea in the back of my head that one day, I would figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up, and go and do it. Only I woke up one day, all grown up, and still no idea.
Anyone else have any idea where my life went and what I should do with it when I find it again?
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