Midlife Crisis...Does it really exist?

For those of you turning 30, may you have a similar experience to mine. I freaked the royal hell out all the way up until the day before. I thought I was going to die when I turned 30, it was getting so bad.

I woke up on my birthday, sat up...and said to myself "What the hell was I freaking out about?"

It really turned out to be that insignificant of a barrier at the time, and even looking back, my freaking out was more related to life circumstances that had nothing to do with my age in and of itself.

However, now that I'm starting to notice the little crinkles at the corners of my eyes, the flyaway eyebrow hair, excessive ear hair (why the hell does that crap grow on my EARLOBE? Are my ears that cold that they're stealing follicles from my head?), the beginnings of grey hairs creeping into my goatee and, of all places, on my shoulder blade...I'd kind of like my 20s back. Only as long as I can keep what I've learned in my head...there's a lot of stupid stuff I did then that I'd like to fix up.

Rubb Ed wrote:

I'd kind of like my 20s back. Only as long as I can keep what I've learned in my head...there's a lot of stupid stuff I did then that I'd like to fix up.

Like what?

That's for me to know, and you to never, ever find out.

With my meager 24 I still have some time to go until I hit the midlife crisis sweet spot. But I love reading your stories. I do fear the big 25, but that's because when I was young, I always saw the older guys, those beyond youth and getting into the settled serious life, as being 25 and older. It will probably end up as every other birthday, not changing anything, and just another number on the track record.

I gotta laugh at the 25-30 freak out...there's no need. It's all in your state of mind.

My 30's were awesome and every year got better. I allowed myself to take advantage of new and long desired opportunities instead of being Mr. Practical. ( without going overboard) I'm glad I fiulfilled the fast car, motorcycle, boat etc. urges when I had them and had the opportunity to experience them...great memories! It's fun and all, but it wears off. I never thought my tastes would change, but the do, quite a bit. I thought I would be a Harley rider forever, then it just got old and I got into restoring old motorcycles instead of riding them.

My forties came recently and I just look at life with even more humor. The things, situations and people that I used to waste my time worrying about I don't bother with and it feels great! I like spending time with my family and going out more, now that I got all that, "gotta buy stuff for me" out of my system. FEAR NOT, it's all good.

Jarhead22 wrote:

I gotta laugh at the 25-30 freak out...there's no need. It's all in your state of mind.

My 30's were awesome and every year got better. I allowed myself to take advantage of new and long desired opportunities instead of being Mr. Practical. ( without going overboard) I'm glad I fiulfilled the fast car, motorcycle, boat etc. urges when I had them and had the opportunity to experience them...great memories! It's fun and all, but it wears off. I never thought my tastes would change, but the do, quite a bit. I thought I would be a Harley rider forever, then it just got old and I got into restoring old motorcycles instead of riding them.

My forties came recently and I just look at life with even more humor. The things, situations and people that I used to waste my time worrying about I don't bother with and it feels great! I like spending time with my family and going out more, now that I got all that, "gotta buy stuff for me" out of my system. FEAR NOT, it's all good.

Crap, now I gotta get a fast car, motorcycle, and boat. Thanks!

Rubb Ed wrote:

For those of you turning 30, may you have a similar experience to mine. I freaked the royal hell out all the way up until the day before. I thought I was going to die when I turned 30, it was getting so bad.

I woke up on my birthday, sat up...and said to myself "What the hell was I freaking out about?"

It really turned out to be that insignificant of a barrier at the time, and even looking back, my freaking out was more related to life circumstances that had nothing to do with my age in and of itself.

I just turned 30 a little over a month ago, and my experience was exactly the opposite. We had a great birthday party, the 'old' jokes rolled right off my back, and a good time was had by all. However, once everyone left and I had some time to myself, the whole thing hit me pretty hard. Typical "what have I done with my life," "what will I do before I die," etc. All the fun stuff. I got it out of my system in one night and have returned to whatever it is I am. The goal to retire before 30 was not accomplished, and now I must focus on achieving this goal before 40. Screw you, dot-bomb fallout. The clock is ticking, and I've noticed that it seems to tick a little faster every day.

This thread has become "30-year-olds Anonymous."

I think I'm going to go buy a loft/condo, get a porsche, and date alot of women. Midlife crisis..what?

The clock is ticking, and I've noticed that it seems to tick a little faster every day.

Thats the only thing that really bothers me to tell you the truth. How the hell do you stop that?

Erm...yeah, mark down another guy turned 30 this year.

What's with this site? Are we all subliminally called here for our 30th year, Close Encounters style (just...can't...stop...styling weiner bombs...with my mash...potato)

I pretty much ignored that anything was out of the ordinary on the day. Made a point of not mentioning it or doing anything special for it.

As for the physical stuff; I went grey in my early twenties, so I'm used to that. I have one rouge eyebrow hair that that I swear is trying to grow long enough to throttle me in my sleep. No ear hair yet, but the nostril hair is like some magic self-replicating substance. If you could survive eating nostril hair, then my nose is the horn of plenty

As for the crisis, I do get t he urge every now and then to go a bit off the wall - but after I'm done it never seems worth the effort, or really that essential. The gap between the urge and that realisation just seems to be getting narrower as time goes by.

There's a definite "Womb of '76" vibe around here now.

Given the turn that the conversation has taken, I had better make the most of the next four years.

I'm going through something similar right now. I think my wife and I both are. I
don't want this to turn into a married DDT or something, but in our case we've gone
through multiple lives. There was fat, lazy and happy life where I was over 400lbs.
and my wife was also very overweight.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30367835@N00/115994911/in/set-72057594083853890/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30367835@N00/115994910/in/set-72057594083853890/

There was athletic, cooking all the time, very healthy and very active life where we
were able to shed about 150 of those pounds each and do 50 mile+ bike rides,
triathlons (mostly my wife on the triathlons), etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30367835@N00/141740612/in/set-72057594127541382/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30367835@N00/113580033/in/set-72057594083851194/

There were also many lives in between there. There was a period of time where I
worked 60+ hours a week to try to move up up up in my career as a software engineer.
There was a period of time where I was extremely anxious, before I began getting
that treated. We've been through a lot.

And recently we've started to look at each other and realized that we've spent a LOT
of time together. Married for over 8 years, dated for 2 years before that. A decade
together. And we started young. I'm 31 and she's 29. And we realize now that in
addition to having this urge to suddenly do different things in our lives, we in
some ways don't know what to do with our lives. My wife wants to do the Ironman. I
want to get back into basketball playing shape and make friends. I literally have no
friends I see on a regular basis in person, in large part because my wife and I
spent so much time together that I just didn't get out much.

So I don't know if it's early mid-life crisis or the 10-year itch or that we're just
so different than the people that started dating 10 years ago, but we're both
starting to look around and make more of our lives right now in our own ways. Like
some of you I turned gray-ish years ago. And I embraced baldness 3 or 4 years ago
with my shaved head. But I just now think I'm starting to realize that I want to
live a little more. That doesn't necessarily mean going out and getting a fast car.
In fact, I don't even know what it means and that's part of what's scary about it.

Sorry to get serious there, but this topic hit a nerve with me.

Nice job there, DS.

As for ear hair, I just had to buy one of these:
IMAGE(http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8283/213ct7.jpg)

Tickles like all get-out. I use it for ear and nose hair. /shivers

And what's with the hair on top of the ears? WTF!?!?!

And yes, the back is getting covered too. Now, if you want to see a real fuzzy butt...

Haakon7 wrote:

Given the turn that the conversation has taken, I had better make the most of the next four years. :D

As a fellow 26-yr old, I'll second that.

Marsman wrote:

As for ear hair, I just had to buy one of these:
IMAGE(http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/8283/213ct7.jpg)

Tickles like all get-out. I use it for ear and nose hair. /shivers

Does that work for butt hair?

kellmeister wrote:

Does that work for butt hair?

The butt hair issue is a no brainer. Put a mirror on the floor....squat over mirror...and start pulling out each ass hair with tweezers...wash tweezers, then wipe up the blood.

So, ah... How about Mr. Happy keeping up with the job? Is it true you kinda slow down?

I mean, I've heard stories about my dad going at it well into his 60s, but you never know...

Mex wrote:

So, ah... How about Mr. Happy keeping up with the job? Is it true you kinda slow down?

I mean, I've heard stories about my dad going at it well into his 60s, but you never know...

31 and all is well, wind changes direction and all that...of course if there was a problem I would be lying and saying the same.

baggachipz wrote:

The goal to retire before 30 was not accomplished, and now I must focus on achieving this goal before 40. Screw you, dot-bomb fallout. The clock is ticking, and I've noticed that it seems to tick a little faster every day.

I had my first midlife crisis in 2001-2002 (when I was 24/25), and so I, together with my cousin, made an automated Stockmarket trading program which was supposed to magically generate money out of thin air. We lost $4000 summarily on that venture - despite all the training runs with prerecorded data, we did not consider a few things, to say the least.

Now that I'm 29.4 years old, I'm experiencing the same crisis. I found a Craigslist posting about a guy who was looking to talk about Algorithmic Stockmarket Analysis, met him, we talked, and suddenly, I'm about to make a second iteration of this program. My bank account is trembling already.

shihonage wrote:
baggachipz wrote:

The goal to retire before 30 was not accomplished, and now I must focus on achieving this goal before 40. Screw you, dot-bomb fallout. The clock is ticking, and I've noticed that it seems to tick a little faster every day.

I had my first midlife crisis in 2001-2002 (when I was 24/25), and so I, together with my cousin, made an automated Stockmarket trading program which was supposed to magically generate money out of thin air. We lost $4000 summarily on that venture - despite all the training runs with prerecorded data, we did not consider a few things, to say the least.

Now that I'm 29.4 years old, I'm experiencing the same crisis. I found a Craigslist posting about a guy who was looking to talk about Algorithmic Stockmarket Analysis, met him, we talked, and suddenly, I'm about to make a second iteration of this program. My bank account is trembling already.

Well, I guess you could say it's better to have risked and lost than to have never risked at all.

Only 25 here, but my life is constant introspection. I don't have crisis so much as building points where suddenly I act on what I've been thinking on for years. Then again, I'm young by the standards of this thread.

I've hit the 29.9 yr mark and looking back at some of these posts, I've realized how I grew up too quickly. Started full time work on Final Exam Day +1, married at 25 and now expecting my first baby in a few months. Bought a new car and paid it off, elbow deep in a mortgage and working for a finance company... Geez, I didn't leave anything for my 40s, let alone my 30s!
I didn't really realize this until I went to Europe last month and saw a few other 20-somethings, running around on their own and doing their thing (dunno where the cash for that comes from).
Well, to those in similar situations as me.... here's to early retirement!

TuYungTuDy wrote:

I've hit the 29.9 yr mark and looking back at some of these posts, I've realized how I grew up too quickly. Started full time work on Final Exam Day +1, married at 25 and now expecting my first baby in a few months. Bought a new car and paid it off, elbow deep in a mortgage and working for a finance company... Geez, I didn't leave anything for my 40s, let alone my 30s!
I didn't really realize this until I went to Europe last month and saw a few other 20-somethings, running around on their own and doing their thing (dunno where the cash for that comes from).
Well, to those in similar situations as me.... here's to early retirement!

I feel you there. I got married way early. I started work the day after I graduated. I spent the first 7 years of my post-college life trying to rescue my parents/brothers from poverty. I'm just now starting to try to be an individual and carve out my own life.

IMAGE(http://www.bustedtees.com/bt/images/BT-lifebegins-gallery-88.jpg)

DSGamer wrote:

I feel you there. I got married way early. I started work the day after I graduated. I spent the first 7 years of my post-college life trying to rescue my parents/brothers from poverty. I'm just now starting to try to be an individual and carve out my own life.

Yup, I'm with you... although for us it was not so much poverty as "aversion-to-hard-work-and-taking-crap-from-others-for-money". Problem now is getting the family to let go.

When I hit 30 it was nothing. Friends threw me a great surprise party (after a diversonary celebration that they deliberately planned to be kind of lame). I never really cared that I was hitting 30 because I know age is all in your head. Will a crisis come later on? I don't know, maybe. I try to do the things I want now, instead of letting a bunch of regrets pile up on me.

A mid-life crisis is all about trying to recapture your lost youth by acting terribly immature for your age, right? I do that all the time.

I've always called the thing that happens at age 25-29 a "pre-life crisis." The "oh my God I haven't been deciding things, I've just let life happen to me, and now I'm doing what? And I might keep doing this for the rest of my life if I don't stop now? Holy crap!" This is what led me to giving up my high-paying Corporate Whore (tm) job and going back to school for four years (undergrad all over again) to become a teacher, for a whopping salary boost of... -50%. What's money anyway, if it's just a slightly better vehicle, a slightly better place to live, slightly better computer/stereo/etc. and you're miserable as hell?

Going to Greece....not a crisis. Freaking destiny, man.

And about the weird hair. WTF is up with me not having grey/white hair appear anywhere but in my nose, and those being abnormally long? Is my nose stressed-out? Also, what used to be a random hair or three on *top* of my shoulders is now becoming a little forest. Hasn't moved to the back of my shoulders (or my back, really) but it's only a matter of time. Just remember though, everytime you get rid of one of those freakishly wrong/long eyebrow hairs, you get to make a wish. Not a big wish, more of a "I hope this chili sits well in my stomach" kind of wish than a "I hope Britney Spears cuts off her hair and becomes a nun" kind of wish.

Feel lucky. At least you don't get hair ON your nose. I'm getting those little ones poking out the top. That's a battle that once started never ends.

DSGamer wrote:

Feel lucky. At least you don't get hair ON your nose. I'm getting those little ones poking out the top. That's a battle that once started never ends.

Wait, what? A unibrow? Or something more... sinister?

More sinister. I already have some hairs between the brows. It's little hairs on the top of the nose. The outside. Short, but there nonetheless....