Happy birthday

My birthday heralds an annual mid-life mini crisis. This year may become a mid-life medium or monumental crisis. It’s still evolving, pending my capacity to progress it or quash it.

I think a mid-life crisis generally might include changing homes and jobs. With my skills in self-diagnosis I have concluded that I am at risk. This afternoon with my husband I raised the prospect of our moving to the country. My poor shift-working husband, hit with this when he’d only just awoken and was yet to be caffeinated. After he left for work this evening I further developed my crisis, only just refraining from calling up a friend to ask her to refer me for a new job in the country. But sensibly, I’ll only need that new job if we do move to the country.

Sensibly . . . sensible. Every year after my birthday I sensibly suppress the crisis.

My husband and I have good jobs, we live in a good suburb, close to work and the kids’ schools. Choosing to be sensible is one way to suppress the crisis. But I have other methods. Other tools in my tool-belt include practicing gratitude for what I have; minor distractions like Facebook, watching TV and reading; and major distractions such as undertaking a university degree while working full time (guaranteed to reduce the time available to ruminate existentially).

Distracting myself, pushing additional information into my brain, or perhaps the occasional wine to relax my mind all help ensure there’s no time or inclination to ponder life and its overall direction. All of this can work, except when it’s my birthday.

I’m possibly due for a mid-life crisis. I’ve previously had an earlyish-life crisis. A monumental one, but the outcome was fantastic. I went out into the desert on a holiday and decided to never go back home. A story for another day.

image courtesy of @finnmacfee

Author: Jen Pritchard

Creatively bashing with the keyboard and camera. Treechanger, nature-bather, sustainability-aimer, reader/writer. View all posts by Jen Pritchard