My Story: The Crux Of My Midlife Crisis
My Own Story: The Crux Of My Midlife Crisis
My midlife crisis has over recent years developed into a midlife transition. The hard part, the lack of understanding of what is going on and who I really am has gone. Understanding myself happened once my wife had left and I was able to understand how much of me had been lost in my relationship. But it wasn’t just about the divorce that got me to open my eyes again.
To find yourself again, and to be able to do that without blaming others is a liberating experience. However, before I went through this part of my learning I spent a number of years trying to work my true inspirations and motivations with little success because of the influence my marriage had on me.
Once my wife had gone I was only then able to begin to look at me without feeling guilty about what really inspired me. I took responsibility for how I felt within my marriage and decided that wasn’t the way I wanted to feel now so I made a conscious decision to be honest to myself about what motivated me & thus accepted who I really was.
There was something I brushed over when I last wrote about my own experience with midlife that I feel now ready to expand on. Its about that defining point in a midlife crisis when you are right at the crux of your crisis and you are looking at your life thinking, “oh crap, now I know exactly what went wrong and what I should have done”.
For me it seemed at that time (and still to a degree now) quite simple.
One error of judgement. One choice of life that changed everything for me.
I chose to be safe and secure rather than risk everything and follow my heart.
I promise myself repeatedly to never to that again.
Here’s what happened.
I was at a point of disillusionment with the whole topic of working for corrupt negligent and inefficient corporates and was struggling with my mid life coming up, my sense of achievement and my self-esteem. I had more money than ever before and was looking for ways to fulfil myself.
I started to collect cars with an irresponsible passion but it didn’t fulfil me, it only fed me. Feeding yourself like that requires regular feeding, you never get full, just more addicted. Fulfilling yourself is more about achievement. It moves you on in life and gives you a sense of well being.
Whilst in the middle of gently musing over my midlife value, being disillusioned about my chosen career and the life that I had achieved a bomb hit me square in the face.
I had spent some time trying to make contact with a bunch of old friends I had lost as part of marrying and moving away from my home town. The more I looked the more I thought of those who I had met and passed by me throughout my life.
I now wanted to hear from them all. So it came to the day when I went looking for my old band on Google. Using their names I started to come up with a new name for the band and remembered around 15 years ago briefly talking to one of the guys who said they had changed their name. There it was. Websites and discographies about them.
Luckily I got hold of our old manager and he responded to me within a few hours. He told me a couple of the guys were still in the band and were coming back from LA (to London) after doing a track for the latest Matrix film whilst the other was off to the BBC to play live with his new band. I was very happy for them and wished them well.
However, I myself was devastated.
The more I thought about their success the more I realised how much my life could have changed if I had made one single decision earlier in my life. I had been a good contributor to the bands creative output even including near the end some of my own fully composed songs so there was no reason to think I wouldn’t have been part of the success, and maybe would have influenced it too.
I missed the opportunity to become part of a successful musical partnership because back when I left the band I didn’t have enough confidence to ditch my safe comfortable well paid job and take a risk to follow my heart.
I had qualifications coming out of my ears with telecommunications which was beginning to build into a booming industry. In contrast and I had nothing to show for music other than some budding talent.
My parents would not support me taking music seriously and so I would have had to leave my family and set up somewhere and cope with all the needs of survival (at a pretty young and unconfident time) not knowing how I was going to earn any money.
I think of this point as the crux of my midlife crisis. At the time I was loosing some connection with reality and dreaming of slotting back in with them like the past 17 years had not made any difference.
It was the point at which all the thinking and deliberating about what I should have done and do with my life & what was the point of my life all came to me like I was punched in the face. I saw my whole life as two parallel lives, the one I was in, and the one that I could have taken had I been more confident, stayed with the band and earned money by immersing myself in my own creativity.
I went off the wall a little, and that will be interesting reading I think for another day.
At the time my wife and I had already decided to move out of suburbia and corporate life to start afresh by the sea where we loved holidaying. So this was another wave of emotion that added to that decision and challenge.
For although we were on our way into the sunset I had discovered that there maybe something I could do that would perfectly fulfil me, and I was planning to move away from where it was all happening; London.
I had suppressed my musical aspirations because I had no support from my family. As a kid with not a lot of confidence I struggled with music because it was a big gamble and I just didn’t have enough guts to follow my heart.
Yet as I became honest with myself I rejected any feelings of guilt about the value of making music. It was part of me and a very natural thing for me to do. So in what ever way I needed to get it back into my life for good.
I spent the next few years ‘playing at’ music before finally understanding myself and being free of any guilt I had about feeling that music was a waste of time when there were so many other responsibilities needing my attention.
Over time a few people have helped and encouraged me to the point where I don’t need any more encouragement.
I have a little site named Ambient Music Garden which sells my music along with a number of other independent artists from around the world.
I’m not making a living by far but I feel I am now nurturing part of me that is real and that I can not deny.
Someday the website might be making enough to call it a contribution to ‘a living’ but whilst I don’t, that is no excuse to stop doing what I love because that is the first and top reason why I make music. It is part of me and always will be whilst I stay honest to ourselves.
Is there anything that you feel you have lost in your past ?
Guy
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Filed under: Mid-Life Crisis
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptMy Own Story: The Crux Of My MidlifeCrisis My midlife crisis has over recent years developed into a midlife transition. The hard part, the lack of understanding of what is going on […] [...]
[...] You may feel like trying to recreate the same opportunity again, but now you are older. Some opportunities happen when you are young and can’t be re-attempted again such as making it big with your college band. But others at midlife, are perfectly reasonable and perhaps you are now better prepared to succeed in. So, instead of the college band, perhaps managing college bands? I talk about my own experience which is similar to this example in my own midlife crisis here. [...]