Conditions for contentment
When one is hit by a severe case of midlife crisis, one feels an urgent need to turn one’s life around. I have no wife I could leave for a 20-year-old. No money to buy a flashy sports car either. But I have dreams. Things I always wanted to do “someday.” And now I feel, painfully, that just any “someday” is not going to cut it anymore. What if I am running out of time? What if the only “someday” still available to me is right now?
This thought scares the shit out of me. Because when I say “dreams,” I am not talking about luxury dreams, such as owning my own private island. I mean things that actually matter to me. Things I have to achieve (at least some) to feel I have lived a good life.
Fair warning - this is the thinking-aloud kind of article, not the guru-telling-you-how-to-do-it kind. Some people find it interesting to observe a confused schmuck trying to figure out his life at the ripe old age of 47. If you don’t, the following text will probably disappoint you.
What do I want?
So, what do I need to arrange so that I feel good about life? What are my conditions for contentment? Here are a few thoughts that keep popping up in my mind again and again:
- Life is too short to work on tedious tasks. I am a smart and creative dude (though not a humble one, apparently). I want to work on something interesting.
- Life is too short to work on someone else’s projects. I want to work on my ideas for once. Maybe they suck. But I want to give them a shot.
- Life is too short to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon in the office when work can be done just as well in the early morning or evening.
- Life is too short to spend two hours a day in traffic commuting to the office when work can be just as well done from home.
- Life is too short to suffocate in a city when my work can be done just as well from a lovely little town in Spain near mountains where you can ride a bike wonderfully. The very best thing, of course, would be if that town also had a small group of people who see life in a similar way. Am I asking too much? Apparently, there are people who managed to find all of that - that is encouraging.
Yep, a lot of these depend on having more work freedom. To me, that means home office all the time. I have read enough discussions about this topic to know that people feel strongly about it, and I want to be clear - I am not saying that the home office is good, per se. It’s just that I have a certain image of my life that gives me that butterflies-in-stomach feeling, and I want my life to be more like that image. If you crave the hustle and bustle of the big city and love the energy of working with a bunch of people who meet in an office every day, that’s great. I wish we could all move into the picture of life we paint in our heads.
How to get it?
I decided to quit. My job was easy, but so routine that a trained monkey could do it. I had to go to the office even though the work could be done from home (as we practiced during Covid). And it didn’t pay that well.
Yes, it would have been smart to build something while still employed. Work evenings on side projects, try freelance gigs, etc. I tried that. I worked a little on my ideas here and there. But working on your projects after work is hard. I had too little time to gain momentum. I was too tired to work after work (yes, even easy jobs can be tiring).
Some people have built something after work, and I admire them. But I tried, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I had to either make my peace with an unsatisfying job or try something different.
My job gave me safety, but the price (for me) was the inability to move forward. I stopped paying that price. Now I don’t have to go to work. I can use all my energy to rebuild my life. How exactly? I am not sure yet. I have to figure something out.
I will run out of savings in a few months. I have the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. By quitting, I forced myself to start something new. I don’t know what it is going to turn into. Quite possibly a shitshow. That makes me nervous. But it’s exciting.