I'm not nearly as old as you are (my 41st isn't until the end of next week), but I think I can relate. I went through my mid-life crisis a bit early, around age 30. I'd just accomplished all the big-deal goals--PhD, wife, child, dog, house in the suburbs, good job, two-tone blue minivan, all that, and was left to think--this is it? This is what I'll be doing for the next 35 years? It sounds like I was rather a bit more unhappy than you; my wife was definitely not the coolest woman on earth, for sure.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend my route to fulfillment, though--divorce, moving into a basement apartment, limited access to my daughter, loss of friends, etc. Ten years later, things are good, very good. I definitely came out the other side happier, but it was a long haul.

The best piece of advice I got ten years ago was a bit trite, but it rings very true--when you look back on your life 30 years from now, what will you regret not doing? You know, if you want a Corvette, get a damned Corvette. Don't wait until you're 60, then regret not doing it earlier.

So, no, I suppose I don't have any specific advice on how to fill the void. But I do sympathise.

Wow--just found what I wrote 5 years ago on this topic. I'm consistent, at least.

(As a followup, I'll add that I met the now MrsMoonPie a month after that post.)

I think I had my midlife crisis at 31 (I'll be 37 this year), which depresses me since that means I'll be dead by 62.

Just don't hurt anyone while you're having it. I've gone through someone else's and came out the other side really damned beaten up.

I guess it trigged my own, though. I have to figure out how to relate to being on the other side of mortality and with limited time (and none of the automatic advantages of being Young in America) to do things. But I think it's not really that bad, being here. And probably pretty free because I really have no-one to impress and the pressure not to disappoint is entirely on myself and I know how not to disappoint myself.

I guess that sounds selfish, but it isn't if you take it to mean that being responsible for yourself and not letting yourself down leaves you very able to support the people you love in all sorts of ways you might not have been able to when you were worried about awing other people "when you grew up".

If you're basically happy, then don't lose sight of that while you're blowing off midlife steam. But definitely blow it off. Life is for the living.

My entire life has been in crisis. I look forward to/dread midlife calm.

I think I'm having a bit of a crisis, the whole "is this really what I want to do with my life" kinda thing. I figure it'll get better once I figure out what I'm going to do when the PhD is done. Hawaii and Sand Diego are still on teh short list. So is "meeting interesting guy with awesome job and doing the family thing" although I would never have guessed that 5 years ago. Soccer mom with a PhD, I'm trying to figure out if I could live with that.

I really like Erikson's idea of "generativity" being necessary as an adult. Having kids is certainly not required to be happy, but having some sense of contributing to or leaving something behind for the next generation may be.

"A person does best at this time to put aside thoughts of death and balance its certainty with the only happiness that is lasting: to increase, by whatever is yours to give, the goodwill and higher order in your sector of the world." (via)

This page has a nice summary. I like how they contrast "What am I doing with my life?" with "Who am I living my life for?"

I have always done what I wanted to do with my life. The last five years have been a little detour... I first took a 'real job' so I could get insurance for my family (funny, that!) and now I have taken this one because it was my 'get out of America free' card.

As soon as I accomlish my plan for this place (installing and a configuring a massive UK network of my own design), I'm going to punt it. I find IT to be crashingly dull.

41 here. Don't know exactly what "midlife crisis" means, but I've been doing a lot of re-evaluating. I've got no marriage or kids, and I rent my apartment, so mostly it's been in terms of thinking about picking up and moving somewhere else. But I've also been rediscovering my photography hobby, and getting pretty good at it, and mixing it with travel seems to have been a good thing. And after I got back from Europe I appreciated more the home and stability and connections that I do have. I think it's more of a question of keeping that discovering spirit alive no matter how old you are.

I've gotten so I don't know which crisis I've had was my midlife one...

I guess I might be mis-using the phrase "mid-life crisis", which maybe does mean more doing crazy things like buying the sports and such to recapture a lost feeling.

I've led most of my adult life in a pretty care-free, oblivious state, and seemed to be happy just about every day. I took every day as it came and didn't really let anything weigh on me mentally or emotionally. Then a few months ago my office closed and I went from working in an office with many of my best friends (some of whom lost their jobs) to working alone at home. Simultaneously my account base was cut in half (through no fault of mine, just a weird redrawing of territories during a restructuring and 2 of my other accounts shutting down around the same time), which pretty much took the wind out of sales. For a few months I was pretty depressed and lost any enthusiasm for work and my homelife. I'm pulling out of that now, slowly but surely, but it's opened up my head to loads of questions and uncertainty. Now I realize that what I thought of as a healthy state of happiness might have actually been denial and repression. It's healthier to address these issues and it's allowing for some long over due personal growth, but happy-go-lucky sure was a lot more fun! At least I'm starting to enjoy my hobbies again - that bummed me out even more that I didn't want to do the things that I had previously loved so much.

This was all obviously all triggered by severe changes at work and the realization that I'll be in a new career very soon (which scares the crap out of me at the moment), but I think it's ushered me into that mid-life crisis stage as well.

I expect a midlife crisis in about a century, since I plan on living until 2242.

Whenever I find myself spiraling into this kind of soul-searching and questioning, I always seem to find my way back to Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness. I'm reading it right now actually.

Some of what you're talking about just sounds like a normal re-adjustment to life changes.

Which, really, is what a "midlife crisis" is. It's not like something magical happens when you enter your 40s or 50s that triggers it -- historically, this is the time in life when parents' children are leaving home and therefore forcing the parents to form some sort of new identity not dependent on their children, and also when women are beginning to hit menopause. So, it's an identity crisis of sorts, and more of a "crisis that happens at midlife" as opposed to a "crisis caused by midlife."

With more people having children later or not at all, I think we're going to start seeing the whole idea fall apart a bit. Again, not because people won't have to start adjusting to new life circumstances from time to time, but just because there's going to be less of a generational "This same thing happens to all of us at the same age" thing going on.

Slack-a-go-go, I'm sorry to hear about the situation with your job. I know how much it's meant to you all those years. The fact that you were doing what you love for a living is not to be taken lightly -- it is an all-too rare situation. There's a concept in marxism (hee hee, bear with me, seriously!) about alienated vs. non-alienated labor. Broadly speaking, alienated labor is that work which is done just to live -- you don't have much control over your work, and it doesn't carry much meaning. You show up, you do various tasks, you get paid (whether a little or a lot), you leave.

Non-alienated labor is when you do have a stake in and a significant measure of control in your work. It can come with plenty of hassles, and ups and downs, and it's not always easy or fun, but at the end of the day, it's essentially meaningful.

That's what you've had for so long. I think it's natural to mourn its (impending) loss. I also think it might be natural to be feeling scared that now you're going to have to trade one type of work for the other, and also perhaps angry that you've been put in this position through no fault or actions of your own. The control you had has been taken away.

As you say, the question that now naturally arises is "what's it all about?" (Alfie!) But that's a sort of overwhelming thing to answer. Maybe there are less open-ended ways of examining the question. What else brings enjoyment in your life? (You say you're enjoying your hobbies again, which is heartening!) What are the things you find meaningful? What are some things you've always been curious about, but never pursued?

None of that's to sugarcoat the loss of your work. But maybe there's a way to use it as a catalyst to think about ways to reimagine your life, both individually and as a couple, so that what is meaningful to you is back in your control.

All my best, man. (And say hi to Mrs. Slack, by the way!)

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It's nice to see some perspective from others - lots of good things to ponder. I've been wanting read some Bertrand Russell for a while, so this could be a good time. And scody, thanks - it helps that you know me and my job. I've been fortunate love absolutely love my job for 15 of the 16 years I've been doing it. Which I know puts me pretty far ahead of most people. And i don't take that for granted at all, I am very fortunate. It's been a blast, but it also sort of stifled my growing a bit, so I'm actually welcoming some big changes. As scary as they are, I'm really looking forward to what's on the other side of everything I'm going to. I'm excited for the destination, I'm just dreading the journey.

Thanks again MeChas. There's a pretty wide net of people here, and I'm always amazed at the intelligence, compassion, and genuine concern for others that I see here - even for an on-again-off-again poster like myself.

Also, scody, I'd be lying if I said I didn't roll my eyes when it only took you three sentences to get to a Marxist concept, but that's actually a spot-on point. So I have to give you props.

Do I put "Non-alienated labor" on my resume or do I save it for the interview? Thanks again!

I'll echo what occhiblu says about life readjustment vs. mid-life crisis.

I changed my life drastically right around the time I turned 30. I was very comfortable, working for people I liked, doing work that suited me, with a close circle of friends, a lovely home, and a comfortable life. I had started recovering from my partner's death a few years previous, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I had made a niche for myself in the community.

And I was suddenly gripped with the desire to change everything.

To celebrate my 30th birthday, I decided to take a leap of faith. What I had in mind: jump out of a perfectly good airplane. A friend and I started making arrangements to go skydiving. For reasons to complicated and boring to remember, much less to document here, we never made it.

Instead, I found and trained a replacement for myself at work, left my job, gave up my gorgeous apartment, fell (shallowly) in love, moved to a small town where I knew almost no one, and eventually started my first year of college.

It was a leap of faith, all right, and my faith in myself paid off.

I'm in a different town now, at a different school in a program that suits me beuatifully, with a completely different set of goals, and deeply head-over-heels in love with a very different man. My life now bears little resemblance to my life at 30, and I'm as happy as I was then. Happier!

It makes me question the notion of "mid-life crisis."

I think it's more of a question of keeping that discovering spirit alive no matter how old you are.

What mats said. I've tried to do this in my life, and so far, have reached 42 without feeling any kind of crisis or feeling like I'd reached some sort of reckoning point.

I think I'm having mine right now.

Also, scody, I'd be lying if I said I didn't roll my eyes when it only took you three sentences to get to a Marxist concept, but that's actually a spot-on point. So I have to give you props.

heh. The totally ironic thing is, I retired from the crazy activist life shortly after leaving Chicago, so I've pretty much gone several years without even thinking of the concept of alienated labor. So it was a flashback to the old scody-with-a-bullhorn days. (Ah, youth!)

Maybe I'll go chain myself to a federal building for lunch, just for old time's sake.

(Oh, and "non-alienated labor" definitely goes on the resume, along with your computer skills and other technical knowledge.)

Hey, we're almost exactly the same age... only one day apart. I'll be 41 on Saturday. I'm enjoying a rather happy period right now. Newlyweds (though we've been together for twelve years, more or less); a job I enjoy (it took a long time for me to get to that point; I didn't start teaching until I was 36); relatively healthy (I never want to take that for granted); finances manageable. I even still have the strong desire and wish, if not quite the discipline, to be a writer (is 41 too old for a first book?). No children, but I think we're okay with that for now (it might still be possible, if we want, or perhaps, in the future, we could adopt). I'd also love to travel more, but hopefully there'll be time. I feel blessed with all I do have. I do get bummed sometimes, about turning 41. My knees hurt going up the stairs. I can't wear a bikini (though certainly some 41-year-olds can). But overall I'm happy, and grateful. I just have to remind myself sometimes.

(Happy Birthday, by the way! As my Dad always said, it beats the alternative!)

when you look back on your life 30 years from now, what will you regret not doing?
This is really, really good advice - my experience is that you will probably not regret doing things that you maybe shouldn't have, but you will deeply regret not doing things that you could have. At 45 and fast approaching 46, there are lots of things that I wish I had done when I had the chance. That's not to say that I will never again get those chances, but the ones I wish I had done the most are unlikely to ever come up again. I don't think I have ever been though a "standard" mid-life crisis, although I went through a major life-focus shift in my 30s that included a whole new career (starting as a receptionist as a 30-something male after working as a boatbuilder since I left school was something of a challenge).

If you want the Corvette, go and buy it (I would suggest something that actually performs, but if you want image and don't care about performance, a Corvette is hard to beat). If you want to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft, do it. Whatever you do, always take advantage of opportunities, because they may never come up again. Fuck all this mid-life crisis pigeonholing - if you want to experience something, get out there and do it and don't give a flying fuck about how society badges you. One advantage that men have is that we can go nuts for a few years and everyone will just pass it off as a "mid-life crisis" and overlook lots of behaviour that would normally raise eyebrows at the least.

For the record, I don't want a corvette. I don't get a charge out of cars unless Steve McQueen's driving them in a movie. I went with the Corvette analogy since I think that's the major midlife crisis cliche.

More than anything I'm looking to try something new since I've been pretty complacent the past decade. My main goal for all of my adult life has been "I want no two days to be the same and I want to learn something new every day." I'm ready to mix it up and take a few chances.

Yeah, I got that and responded in the same way. Whatever it is that gets a charge back into your life (without hurting others etc), do it. Try something new every day, even if it is just walking a different way to the train station. If you need a Corvette to give you that charge and can afford it, buy one. Whatever floats your boat. Actually, that's got nothing to do with age - we could all do with being more adventurous at any age.

I get them every couple of years. Except by now I'm so adapted to them that they hardly count as crises.

Pete Townshend: "I may be old, but I'm not boring!"