Mid-Life Crisis?


As I near my mid-thirties I find myself experiencing a career crisis and I am wondering if the latter is just part of a bigger mid-life crisis. I am not even entirely sure when a mid-life crisis is supposed to occur, the only reference I have is that of the clichéd image of a forty-year old man swapping his wife and kids for a younger woman and a flashy sports car. My fortyyear old-ish husband is also having a midlife crisis of sorts although luckily for him he does not need to start hunting for a younger spouse as he was clever enough to marry me- a woman fourteen years younger. He is probably secretly desperate for a sports car but that is hardly going to materialise and anyway he now finds himself lusting after any car that is bigger than our VW… to fit all the bloody kids stuff (he complains whenever we leave London for a weekend).

His crisis, like mine, is to do with his career. He spent most of thirties (much like his twenties) in a rock n' roll band, touring and playing music. When the band broke up very suddenly when he was 44, he found himself at a loss: his passion and role in life had lost its meaning and he didn’t know where to turn… He decided to go to college and earned a distinction in the first proper qualification he has ever achieved, it gave him an unparalleled sense of pride although unfortunately not a job. He is now keeping busy with any work that comes along: painting, decorating, restoring furniture and still making music because as any artist knows, you can never simply stop doing the thing you feel you were put on this earth to do.

This is the place I find myself now, wondering what exactly I was put on this earth to accomplish. Are we all predestined to a particular life and career or are we masters of our futures, able to conjure up new starts and exciting prospects? I like to think that anything is possible in this life….

For the past six years I have worked as a massage therapist, something that I sort of fell into. I have loved every minute of it but during the last few years a little bit of doubt began to creep in… I hadn’t necessarily found my niche or specialism within the industry. I also knew that I would need to find a less physical element to my work in order for me to continue without causing damage to myself. I thought about Acupuncture, Nutrition, Yoga. My doubts coincided with a longing to have another child, something I had put off for a long time because of my work. Instead of facing the issues with my career, I steamed ahead with the notion of having another baby.  I stopped massaging for a good fifteen months and in this time I began to think whether I wanted to go back to my job after all….

So here we are, both my husband and I pondering over our working futures. Like him I have an unparalleled passion: something I have no doubt I was put on this earth to do: to write. I have written stories ever since the day I started reading books, I have poured my heart into journals, diaries and now blogs - to make sense of my life and of the world. I have attempted novels, short stories and even my half-finished projects have filled me with happiness. Whether it makes me money or not or makes any sense, I always feel compelled to write. 

Perhaps one day my writing will return a profitable gain but until then I need to pull in the coffers somehow. I have started thinking about jobs. I have always said that I would rather die than work in an office but as I mentioned in my last entry- I am now over the self-indulgent melodrama of my twenties. Still, if possible I would rather avoid spending all day sitting in a cubicle and instead do something more creative, more flexible, more interactive. I need to work with people and better still, to work towards helping people, I couldn't do a job without some kind of moral prespective… I would languish pretty quickly in anything to do with fashion or media.

So perhaps- like many others before me- I have fallen upon the idea of teaching. If anybody had suggested this to me in my twenties (which I think somebody once did) I would have laughed. No way! But I like to think that I have grown up a bit since then.

Recently I have become involved in my daughter's school life, I have read in class, joined the kids on school trips, helped with fundraising… and I have loved every minute of it. I have watched my daughter grow from a slightly unconfident and not very loud child to an all singing, all dancing brain box who gets very excited about going to school. I know a lot of this has to do with the teachers who have inspired and encouraged her. They have certainly inspired me. I have just spent a couple of weeks volunteering in a school and I was hit by a sudden epiphany. It felt completely natural to be working with the children and helping them with their learning. Despite the negatives: being called ugly on my fist day, trying to control a group of noisy seven year olds, hearing teachers complain about their twelve hour days, I still left with the feeling that yes, this was something I would really like to do...

Could I be a teacher? Long gone are the days when teaching was seen as a dowdy and lowly profession. 'Those who can’t teach' and all that malarky. Now the teaching world holds stiff competition with Oxbridge academics and other talented graduates battling for spaces on PGCE courses. 

I have my interview for a PGCE in two weeks, so really I should be researching that rather than writing this but- I woke this morning with a desperate need to get this down, for my own clarity but also because I know there are many others out there who are in the process of changing careers and shifting the patterns of their lives. If you are then come share your experiences… I would love to hear about them.

The Good Life

Having returned home to London from the countryside to the news that there is a strangler roaming the streets of Queens Park (in a sort of Victorian, Ripper-esque flurry of madness) I have started pining for a permanent slice of the good life. Cottages, greenery, horses, fields, vegetable patches, dogs, open fires, village pubs... is it enough to pull us out of the city forever or just tempting enough for a weekend away? Could my idyllic portrayal of country life actually be a frontage for a tedious, yawn inducing, even more depraved way of life? I'm racking my brains trying to think of heinous crimes typically committed in the countryside but I guess anything is possible (but hopefully less likely).

We spent the weekend with friends who have ditched London for the rural lands of Northamptonshire. They have the aforementioned horses, dog, open fires etc, etc and are mightily happy with their new life. Well who can blame them? Did I also mention that they are massively in love, which must help when you're living in a village with a tiny population and your only point of human contact, other than with each other, is the neighbourhood Morris dancing troupe. 

They are happy and we were even happier to be spending the weekend with them, loafing in front of the fire, drinking wine and eating lots of home cooked food. Obviously I know that this is not what life in the countryside will be like 24/7. I realise that there must be lots of hard graft involved to ensure that your weekends can be spent in a haze of food induced laziness. And I know that with two kids in tow, life in the countryside could be just as full as in the city but I guess what I'm hoping for is that it will also be a little bit slower.

 

When I asked my friends if they missed the city they said most definitely not- not one teenie bit although they did admit to occasionally feeling lonely and I think it was much a joy for them, as it was for us to play host for the weekend. Loneliness. The couple in question don't have children and I tend to think once you have been a stay-at-home parent you get over the feeling of being lonely because parenthood can be horrifically lonesome with only the sound of crying, farting and Cbeebies to keep you company. So I'm not concerned about loneliness. As a family unit we spend most of our time on our own and frankly at this stage, now that I'm past my hideously self-conscious twenties, I'm pretty content with my own company.  

I keep harping on to my husband about the benefits of the countryside: better air, roomier properties, less stress, less angst, less stuff to rob you blind (i.e lattes, london transport, Pret sandwiches...) and best of all we could get a dog! (A horse is maybe a little way off- much to my daughter's dismay of course). Our youngest is dog obsessed and makes happy noises and points his tiny fifteen-month old finger whenever he spies one in the street. More often than not he is pointing at a cross-looking Staffy (apologies all Staffy lovers I'm sure they are not all angry dogs) so I tend to steer clear but this weekend he spent joyous hours feeding his breadsticks to a Labrador and a Schnauzer and loving the feel of canine spittle all over his face. Ah the simple pleasures of life. 

Are we ready to ditch the bright lights of the city for the more sedate meander of country life? Well I for one say yay, let's give it a go and if we miss anything, well, who said we can't return?

Sleep Wars

Any home that includes a child under the age of five will include a sleep war at one point or another. And I'm not talking about the tribulations involved with getting a child to go to sleep, to stay asleep or to sleep more than five hours a night, but rather the full-on wars parents have with one another when the day's discussion turns to the subject of who has had the most sleep and who needs MORE sleep.

We spent New Year's Eve with friends in Norfolk. They also have two children and the youngest is nine months and still being breast-fed so he is waking up two or three times in the night to feed and snuggle up with mum. Having learnt something from the sleep deprivation caused by child number 1, our friends now have a structured system whereby Mum gets up in the night and dad gets up in the morning (every morning) so mum can catch up on sleep. I find this pretty heroic considering the dad goes out to work every day but the mother insists that a day's work is totally achievable if you've had six hours solid sleep. She may be right. Needless to say, despite the system, they are both equally shattered and can still easily slip into an argument about who had the most sleep and who might be entitled to an afternoon nap at the weekend.

Mmm... It all sounds horribly familiar.

After Elvis was born, we adopted a similar system of me getting up in the night and the husband dealing with the early mornings. When the baby hit nine months I decided to wean him. The day he gulped down three big bottles of milk, he slept through the night. Ah- the moment all parents dream about! We have since enjoyed a few months of relatively uninterrupted sleep but recently due to illness and bouts of teething, we have had to put pay to the glory of a decent night's sleep. Elvis is now waking up crying a fair bit and will moan (or shriek) until he is cuddled and allowed to snuggle down with us. I have always been a bit of a stickler about not having the children in our bed, mostly because the bed just isn't big enough and because I also seem to develop insomnia the moment a small, snuffling thing is tucked up beside me. So we try to resettle him in the cot but as all parents know, this doesn't always work. After a restless night the baby wakes up at the crack of dawn. Since both my husband and I work part time we take turns with these dreaded, early mornings.

We try to be fair, we try to not care about who gets up when, but it is hard not to feel annoyed when you have to haul yourself out of bed for the umpteenth time whilst your partner sleeps on. It is hard not to feel resentful when your better half has a cosy lie in and you have to deal with the crying, the whinging and yet another overly cheerful episode of Postman Pat. Even if you do take in in turns, because lets face it, even with odd lie in (and by lie in I mean 7 rather than 5 or 6 am) you never really stop feeling tired.

Our friends in Norfolk are able to laugh about their sleep wars. The mum joked that when things get really bad, she actually wants to get physical (she feigned a punch to the jaw) and I kind of understood what she meant. Not that I would ever throw a punch (at anyone mind) but there's nothing like a bad nights sleep (over and over again) to make you feel massively, hugely pissed off with those you love and frankly with the whole entire world.

Here's to (trying to) laugh in the face of sleeplessness!