I think it’s a little early for my mid-life crisis (I’m 36), but I’m feeing really burnt out, and I think I’ve got all the necessary catalysts in place for a really glorious melt-down and rebirth, a la Mid-Life Crisis. Anyways, everything I know about having a mid-life crisis I learned from watching American Beauty, and I’m not really interested in cheating on my wife or buying a sports car (I’d rather have a boat, and a boat just ain’t in the budget). In other words, I’m at a loss.
I really don’t even no where to start. Any suggestions? Anecdotal ravings are welcomed and encouraged.
This is easy!! Just start dressing like you are 19, and go to dance clubs where 20-somethings hang out. start chatting up the chicks…it will all end when you overhear one of them talking about YOU “who is that weird old guy?”
Buy a really small red sports car.
Date women who dot their "i"s with a little heart.
Quit your job and pursue learning a musical instrument.
Invest in some Bling Jewelry.
Cultivate a drug habit.
“Day Two: Got the crap kicked out of me by a truckload of rednecks…”
…
“Day 17: Got arrested for vagrancy, spent 1 week in jail; got crap kicked out of me by redneck cops on second, thrid, and sixth day of incarceration…”
…
“Day 33: Finally got a ride out of town…”
Develop an appreciation for high school girls. Who was it that said something like “You have got to love high school girls. I get older and they just stay the same age.”
That can provide you with an anchoring force that will carry you into old age.
I think it is good that you are having a mid-life crisis now. I see people in their fifties claiming to have them and I just think “Who are you kidding?”. Even if they did live to 104, useful life expectancy is down to 1/4 of a tank.
Interestingly, when I was in my early to mid 20s, I assumed everyone in the bar was the same age. As I’ve gotten older, I am discovering that there are actually a lot of 30 and even 40 somethings out and about. You just don’t notice because young people think everyone over the age of 30 dresses and looks like their parents.
Besides, if you are thinking like that at 36, imagine what you’ll be like as that weird old guy in the bar at 70!
I have always believed that I would die when I was 40. I used to assume that it would be caused by a heroic and spectular fighter plane incident. Now that it is only 8 years away, I guess that it will more likley be caused by a secondary infection brought on by a slip on ice.
That meant that I had my mid-life crisis when I was still in college. It fit in well there because it just blended in with everyone else’s life goals crisises.
It’s funny, I still think of myself as being in my mid to late 20s, even though my hair’s starting to gray.
I’m always told I look much younger than I actually am (I’m 45, btw).
I’ve also managed to cultivate a younger-than-chronological attitude, in part because when I was actually in my 20s, I held the 30s and above with absolute disdain. Being over 30 meant I’d be a suburban SAHM with the van and having my own midlife crisis because my life would no longer be my own. When my female classmates started marrying en masse after college graduation, I figuratively ran the other way.
I had my crisis of sorts when I actually did hit 30. Most of my friends were married and starting families. My job was not well-paying, although I greatly enjoyed it. I still lived in my childhood home. I never took the giant leap to be totally independent, etc., because I still saw myself as a kid just out of school, my mother needed help maintaining the house, etc.
I’m probably due for another crisis, though. I’m approaching the big 5-0. Now that’s scary.
I’ve always had trouble trying to figure out just when a midlife crisis should take place. I’d heard it was at forty. When I turned forty, we were in the midst of a massive after flood cleanup at work so I didn’t have time, although my co-workers did throw me a bbq that day after we had finished cleanup for the day. I suppose I could have just postponed it until forty-one, but by then it just seemed silly since I didn’t have it when I was supposed. Anyway, time rocked on, and in 2004 I hit the big 5-0. I thought perhaps that would be the time to have a mid-life crisis, but if that meant carrying on and carousing til all hours of the morning, then it wouldn’t work cause I’m usually sound asleep by ten p.m. So, ACBG (the squeeze), four other friends and I decided we’d go on a cruise and have our collective crises that week. See, I had turned fifty, two other friends had turned fifty and ACBG and the two other friends were about to turn fifty, so we figured if we all had our midlife crises together on a big ship in the ocean it’d just be best for humanity as a whole. So we did. Carried on like we were twenty-one for a week aboard a big old ship. When we got back home, it was all over. Well, I did buy a Mustang convertible last year, but only because it was purty and really looked like a classic 'Stang, so that wasn’t due to crises, it was due to income tax refund and jonesing for a Mustang.
That would be Wooderson, Matthew McConaughhey’s character in the movie Dazed and Confused - great, great movie. Very accurate to my teen years growing up in the 70’s…
Winston - I agree with Quicksilver - this isn’t a MLC, per se - you are far too rationale and circumspect about it. Now, if you found yourself in your new sports car with a high-school girl sitting next to you and thought you were having a great time, but ultimately still felt dissatisfied - THEN you’d be in a mid-life crisis - but it’d be too late to do anything about managing it well…
Experiment a little and allow some passions you have to come to the surface and see if they peak your interest. Go surfing; learn to play an instrument; join a group that does X together (you fill in the blank - plays board games? discusses politics?)
Be prepared to experiment - date your passions for a while before you marry one. You may pick golf, but try it for a bit before you lay out $$$ to join the super-expensive country club in your area.
I ended up in a rock band. And when my wife asks me how many guitars I have to own, before I respond with “as many as I need” I also point out how they are cheaper than a Porsche and less costly than an affair…
Take up hang-gliding, parapente, rock-climbing or underwater shark-wrestling. More exciting and socially acceptable than dating children and not as embarassing as driving a red camaro.
I’ve got to be a serious comics geek. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the title was “Superman ditches Lois to have a fling with Wonder Woman; Batman raids Robin’s college fund to buy a sporty new Batmobile.”
