h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just been accused of having a text book mid-life crisis.

I'm not so sure though that there is such a thing though.

When we reach mid-life, which for this rambling I'm going to say is around early to mid-thirties, we tend to take stock of our lives. We look at things in completely different ways than we did when we were younger. We start to realise our own mortality, and think about what we want out of life.

When I personally was in my late teens I didn't really think about the future much. I lived life as it came. When I got to my early twenties I started thinking about not dying anytime soon so settled down with a lass with the intention of spending the rest of my life with her. We spent our time living together, socialising together and planning our future together. This mostly involved sorting our careers as neither of us wanted kids then. Then towards my late twenties I started thinking about kids, but still wasn't too fussed. I also thought more about work and money. Now I'm in my early thirties and am thinking more. I'm thinking that I've spent the last ten years with a lass I loved, sorting out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.

And I decided that I wanted to have fun. I wanted to spend my time with someone I could talk to, I wanted to be able to sit and chat about total rubbish without them judging me. I wanted to be with someone who shared the same interests as me. I didn't want to be spending every Friday night for the next thirty years doing exactly the same thing.

So I've left the wife and am moving to a new city with the girlfriend.

Is this a midlife crisis or is this taking control of your life?

Don't ask me I'm currenty getting therapy for depression.

You take stock, you make a decision, you go through with it. As long as you believe in your decision, trying to do anything else will be a failure.

Perhaps not a 'crisis' so much as a 'change'. Let's just hope it's just the one?

Ask me again in ten years.

"Mid-life" is in your early to mid-thirties? My friend, you must not be planning to live a long life. Actually, I can well guess your response to that. So never mind, eh?

Mind you, a midlife crisis doesn't exclude taking control of your life or vice versa. Indeed, one can argue that the crisis is occurring exactly because of a failure in self-assertiveness in previous years. So in many ways, they can be viewed as one and the same.

In any case, the classic end to a classic midlife crisis is that you end up coming full circle again. You leave the life that has become stale and old to you. You spend some time indulging yourself in all the things you missed out on. Then eventually your "new life" stops being novel. Last ditch attempts to keep the excitement level high eventually form into a revelation that it's just too tiring to keep it up forever.

The formula continues as you come to appreciate what you had. As your brain and heart begin to seek solace from raw uncertainty, you remember what drew you to your former life in the first place. Whether you have burned your bridges or not, the stereotyical tragedy is that you've caused pain to yourself and/or others by way of your grand adventure. The classic resolution is to somehow rebuild an improved version of the former life, fixing all the little problems that were left sour once.

So is yours a stereotypical case? Well, that will depend on whether you will truly value the new lifestyle you're building after it's boring. Even novelty itself fails to feel novel eventually, from what I've heard via several relatively wealthy friends of mine.

If what you're seeking is a better variety of boring, I believe your chances are good. If you're seeking constant novelty without too much wear and tear, well, it's a bit late to stop now, isn't it? Either way, I wish you the best of luck in life. This development doesn't surprise me in the least. Nor does reading about it here.

By the by, there is an employee at my office who has a "George" clone on her desk. She won't sell it to me at any price. Such is life!

I think that it may well be a return to a new form of the old routine, but I think also that it may take a while to reach that.

I've not known this lass all that long, but we do talk. A lot. This is something that I've not really experienced before in a long term relationship, I've found that it tends to be the shorter ones where you talk. This could well be an omen that this will end up being a short term relationship, but I don't think so. We like the same things, but we also have things that we like seperately. For example we both have the same taste in music, but she likes to play instruments as well whereas I like to listen to instruments being played.
I think also that moving to a new, and much larger city will help to keep originality there for quite a while. Neither of us know anyone here to socialise with, so that's something that we'll end up doing together, finding new social circles. Admitedly I've got a headstart as I work in Manchester and know the people that I work with, but I don't socialise with them.

Hopefully then, by the time the novelty has worn off and we're back to the old routine, we'll both be passed that point where we're seeking new and exciting and are happy with old and comfortable.

I found my George the other day while packing, it's now sat out proudly on my desk at home!