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My midlife crisis

I hit the ground running in January and decided that I could not face another year of the same old routine, doing the same thing day after day and thinking is this it is this the best it’s ever going to be?midlife crisis

Is this what my life has amounted to and, should I be doing something different?

By the time of December 31st I would scratch my head wondering what the hell happened.

I have been trying to find the old me the one that use to be daring, adventurous game for a laugh instead of the boring, predictable, safe person I have slipped into.

I left as a latent teenager came back a young woman, wiser and ready to take on University.

Am I going through a midlife crisis? Or, a crisis of confidence?

Working life began and with a low paid job, any thoughts of travelling and adventure were confined to dreams.

Forever sensible, as the years passed I became more home orientated and when I married for the second time and found my true soulmate I lost the real me.

I love being a mother, wife, worker and whatever anybody else needs of me and yet somehow I lost my self, my sense of identity, the daily routine had become a permanent fixture of me and unwittingly I slipped into comfortable.

As each year rolled by, New Year’s Day dawned and I would ask myself what had I really achieved, what had I actually done for myself that was important to me, for me.

Menopause written on a diagnosis form.I have these great ideas to do stuff like learn italian, improve my spanish, master german so I can converse with my son and my husband’s german family, compete in a triathlon, write a book, learn yoga, work on my flexibility so I can do the leg splits again, befriend an elderly person who is living on their own.

And so the list went on; hardly mind blowing I know and certainly not life changing but a desire to do new things, discover another world outside of the four walls of my home was burning in my belly, partly bucket list stuff, partly to prove to myself that I am not settled in to middle age just yet. 

Desperate not to become middle aged too soon and wanting to have more fun before I am literally too old to try new things, I started this year with a positive, lets learn something different attitude.

I had accepted life assuming it would always be this way. 

My position in life had become too comfortable and I was accepting my life as it is rather than stepping out of the comfort zone and doing something with it

I was stagnating whilst everyone around me seemed to be having fun and embracing life, I was holding myself back convinced that my existence consisted of working, looking after the children, husband, household chores; slowly but surely the old me had disappeared, like a tortoise that hibernates in its shell, so had I.

Desperate to have more excitement in my life and determined to change and not be the safe pair of hands I’d become.

My va va voom had all but disappeared, spontaneity gone and the fly by the seat of my pants kinda gal I once was, she’d left the room for good.

When January 2018 started I knew I had to make seismic shifts in my life pattern at least for my sanity.

I continue to do my drawing classes and after twenty years I picked up skiing again and was fortunate to have a five day break in Austria which has reinforced my desire to continue so I never have to feel the fear of starting over again.

I’ve been into London to see two shows with my husband and have enjoyed two concerts at the O2 and I am determined to continue this journey of cultural self-discovery and reinvention by putting myself to the test instead of shrugging my shoulders and accepting the status quo.

My friends and female aquaintenances also express the same frustration citing never having time or too busy working.

I get that, but with a bit of juggling we can make changes that have a seismic impact and enhance our very being and make us more fulfilled.

Midlife crisis? No, just wanting to do more of the things I want to do.

I realised that all of the above was founded on fear, fear of financial insecurity, fear of my children leaving home for good, fear of my business failing, fear of getting to sixty and looking back wondering what had happened.

Some people want it to happen

Some wish it would happen  

Others make it happen

© Michael Jordan

I definitely want to be the one that can look back on my life and say ‘I made it happen’ what about you?

 

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