Note 0: a two-minute introduction
Two years ago, I entered a phase which many dubbed “midlife crisis”. At the core of this storm were the questions “who am I really, and am I doing the right things with my life?” I’m not sure exactly how to label it, nor am I sure that I’m through it or that I’ve handled it the best possible way. What I do believe is that talking about it may help other men in the same situation. I say men, because while most of our problems are not gendered and simply human, I also believe that men have their own unique set of problems, just like women have theirs. The thing is that I have no way of knowing which of the issues I’ve dealt with are a result of ‘being human’, which are a result of ‘being a man’, and which are uniquely individual to me (as far as problems can be uniquely individual) so if you find a generalization to be untrue for you, it probably is. I’m also not sure how much of this was “midlife”, how much was “existential” and how much was “taking inventory of my life so far” (it certainly had elements of pausing parts of life to figure out the next steps) — and it doesn’t really make a difference for what the process actually was, but knowing this perhaps helps you decide what you should take with you and what you should leave.
Whether you are reading this because you are going through this period of intense development, or someone close to you is, I hope you find something helpful in my notes. I wanted to write shorter pieces to split up the novel-sized essay I could write about this topic, partly to make it easier to digest for you as a reader, and partly to give myself room to contemplate and formulate my learnings.
