As I was chatting with another midlife’d friend recently, I had two insights:
- My search for something more to do in midlife is a different search from when I was younger. Before, I was more searching for who I am/will be. In midlife, I’m more searching for continued usefulness and maintaining contact.
- I no longer have the intensity of youth. Maybe I miss it, but I’m just too tired and spread out to have intensity or passion about things like I used to.
- I feel a bit of a spiritual malaise, too, and a feeling of coasting along— so many years of prioritizing the lives and education of my kids perhaps has this effect. Or years of repetition…. ? I would like to get out of this.
These are not bad things, they just are observations of this time in life.