Your mid-life crisis

[PrettySquareGal]

So I'll be turning 40 (I said it!!!) this December. If I had the funds, I'd buy a sexy hot rod and leer at handsome fellows while driving in it! Since that's not an option, I need to figure out an equally good scandal or event to bring in the next decade in a couple of months.

So, if you are 40 or over, did you have some kind of existential dilemma and deal with it by buying lots of age inappropriate things? What did you do if you care to share? Any suggestion for a glamorous crisis?

 

[MaryDeluxe]

Hey, I hear that 40 is the new 20? A couple months before I turned 30, I made a list of the top 30 things I wanted to do before I turned 30. Then I ran around like mad and tried to get them all done before my birthday. lol So now, it's like a tradition and before each birthday I make a list of things I must do. Reminds me to start working on my list!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Hey, I hear that 40 is the new 20? A couple months before I turned 30, I made a list of the top 30 things I wanted to do before I turned 30. Then I ran around like mad and tried to get them all done before my birthday. lol So now, it's like a tradition and before each birthday I make a list of things I must do. Reminds me to start working on my list!

In my 20's I made a list of things I wanted to do before I died. I don't recall what was on the list, though. Then, when I turned 30 I did another list, that one an ohmygoshtimeisrunningout type of prioritizing. I spent part of last year lamenting what I did not accomplish on the list, but then spent this year realizing all that I DID accomplish but because it wasn't something I had originally envisioned I overlooked it. So I think I'm done with "before I (insert reason)" lists.

 

[Spitfire]

Crisis! What crisis?

When I turned 30 I married the first time - that was crisis!
When I turned 40 I was with a gorgeous woman - my comming wife.
At 50 we were married and had a great son. Lost my job and some s.... partners as friends - but no crisis.
At 60 - Happy as a lark. No crisis. No illness. Lots of fun, work, traveling and love.

Crisis at 40! - what crisis?
Enjoy you birthday:cheers1: Have fun.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Mine wasn't much fun -- over the space of about four years I got divorced, lost my house, had a health crisis, and lost my job. So when does the wild and crazy fun stuff start?

 

[scotrace]

It's much like being a teenager. With more responsibility, less free time and more wheezing.


Oy. You don't know from midlife crisis.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I did feel weird in my 39th year. My ultimate gift to myself when I was 40 was my 1956 Minox camera. It allowed me to get back in touch with and return to the b/w photo background of my childhood (since my pro-photographer parents still had a functioning darkroom) and get myself a useful creative outlet, not to mention a new batch of friends as I used the Internet to seek out and join with subminiature camera experts around the world. (Before this, I thought the Internet was only good for Kirk vs. Picard arguments!)

But alas, my real midlife crisis came at 45 when my marriage fell apart...

 

[Black Prince]

My partner was 39 when we met; I like to think I was his mid-life crisis.

Myself, I remember 29 as being a difficult year because I'd made a sort of mental list, in my early teens, of the things I'd have achieved by the time I was 30 (y'know, millionaire, etc.) and it was somewhat lacking. Also, I was more immersed in gay subculture which, even more than mainstream straight culture, tended at that time to emphasise youth - with 30 being seen as totemic in its perceived over-the-hillness.

Of course, turning 30 was staggeringly anticlimactic. I think that, mentally, some sort of switch was flipped: I realised I didn't have to be fashionable, to keep up with the charts, etc., etc. I began to luxuriate in my incipient fogeyness, to cultivate it.

Now 37, I'm aware of 40 looming. I don't feel the same about it as I did about 30; if anything, I'm actively looking forward to settling into middle-age. All I have to do now is get my wardrobe sorted out...

 

[LocktownDog]

I'll be turning 40 very soon. Too soon. At this point its just a number, as life couldn't get much worse for me than it is right now. If it continues, I may just have to pull a Gauguin (find a sailboat and take off to Tahiti and paint on the beach ... former life be damned).

Richard

 

[Quigley Brown]

For some reason, while single and in my 40s, I think of myself as younger than people in their 20s with kids. I guess it's because I can do whatever and whenever I want.

 

[Black Prince]

For some reason, while single and in my 40s, I think of myself as younger than people in their 20s with kids. I guess it's because I can do whatever and whenever I want.

I feel similar. I think it's a kids/no kids thing. Both my siblings are younger than me, married and have kids, and I feel considerably younger than them in terms of social/financial freedom.

 

[LadyDeWinter]

PrettySquareGal,

I turned 41 three months ago. I had not crisis when I turned 40. It is just a number. I recommend to keep calm. There is no reason for a crisis. Enjoy your life. When you get older you don't feel as insecure as in your youth.
Your are still young, you are not old with 40.

 

[Spitfire]

You are so right Lady dW.
What should I say? I do not feel old - I don't remember ever having had a "midlife crisis", so I take its because I have not reached half of my life yet. That means I will be over 120 years old!
Now - THAT might give some crisis. Untill then: If you are at good health - Age is only something that goes on in your mind.

 

[dostacos]

So I'll be turning 40 (I said it!!!) this December. If I had the funds, I'd buy a sexy hot rod and leer at handsome fellows while driving in it! Since that's not an option, I need to figure out an equally good scandal or event to bring in the next decade in a couple of months.

So, if you are 40 or over, did you have some kind of existential dilemma and deal with it by buying lots of age inappropriate things? What did you do if you care to share? Any suggestion for a glamorous crisis?

well you could RENT a hot sports car for the day and live out that dream

as a 50something, I have not yet hit that birth date crisis, my wife says she has FOUR boys. I may be physically falling apart but inside I am still a kid

our celebration of birthdays tends to be low key, the birthday person chooses what we have for dinner, then cake and Ice Cream later[huh]

 

[Paisley]

A few years ago, I started saving a little money every month for a trip to Hawaii for my 40th birthday. I don't think I'll ever have a honeymoon, so this will be my big trip. It's less than a year and a half away!

As for having a to-do list, if I feel like doing something, I just do it then. I don't wait for New Year's Day or a birthday.

 

[scotrace]

The upshot of reaching the middle years is that you are more comfortable in your own skin. You realize that you don't have to take any guff from the kid at the checkout. And you finally reach the age when you don't give a rat's patootie what people think.

The downside, of course, is the droop.

 

[Edward]

The upshot of reaching the middle years is that you are more comfortable in your own skin. You realize that you don't have to take any guff from the kid at the checkout. And you finally reach the age when you don't give a rat's patootie what people think.

I'm much happier in my 30s than my 20s. I spent my 20s worrying that everyone else secretly thought I was an asshole, and hated me. In my 30s, I still think that everyone dislikes me, really - I just don't care anymore. The most liberating thing I ever did was to stop caring what other people thought of me.

I feel similar. I think it's a kids/no kids thing. Both my siblings are younger than me, married and have kids, and I feel considerably younger than them in terms of social/financial freedom.

I'm the same too. I think feeling younger is the best way to put it. Sometimes it's strange to see everyone else go on to do all that when I don;t, but I never feel "left behind" as such, just that as I never wanted kids nor did I want to live the quiet, suburban life, I've simply gone down a different path. Horses for courses, I guess. [huh] I think education plays a big part in it too. Staying at university until I was 23/24, and then ultimately working in that environment for the last close to nine years, meant I didn't need to grow up so fast as, say, my grandmother did when she left school at 14 and married at 18. Maybe longer life expectancies nowadays mean we grow up with the expectation that we'll live so much longer that we don't feel the need to get through all the big life stages so quickly. Or maybe in part it's because the birth-school-marriage-children norm is so culturally engrained that subconciously we can't help thinking of ourselves as "stuck" at a certain stage if we choose not to conform to that pattern?

 

[carter]

The upshot of reaching the middle years is that you are more comfortable in your own skin. You realize that you don't have to take any guff from the kid at the checkout. And you finally reach the age when you don't give a rat's patootie what people think.

The downside, of course, is the droop.

If I actually had a rat's patootie, I'd gladly give it to someone...anyone.

It's not the droop I fear, it's the fall.

But then again, I'll be slightly north of Art Fawcett in 12 more days.

40 is/was a barely discernible bump in the road. Enjoy the journey.

We all reach our desination sooner or later.

 

[Big Man]

I'll be 52 next month. The way I figure it, I haven't reached "mid-life" yet.

 

[Black Prince]

I'm the same too. I think feeling younger is the best way to put it. Sometimes it's strange to see everyone else go on to do all that when I don;t, but I never feel "left behind" as such, just that as I never wanted kids nor did I want to live the quiet, suburban life, I've simply gone down a different path.

In a sense, I think that part's been relatively easy for me because I've been openly gay since my early 20s and there's never been the same expectation that I would go on to have kids and a "quiet, suburban life". Discussing this with straight friends, they seem to have to wrangle with the "when are you going to settle down and start a family?" stuff to a much greater extent than I do.

Having said which, my mother gave me this book for Christmas a couple of years ago. Is she trying to tell me something...?