My midlife crisis isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.
Surely, by now, I should be knee deep in an affair? I should own a Porsche, a red one, and should probably be clubbing till the wee small hours or something? At the very least I should have dyed my hair a bonkers colour but alas, none of the above apply.
Worse still is the fact that I don’t want any of the aforementioned midlife crisis paraphernalia.
I wouldn’t mind hitting a club… biscuit, an orange one, with a nice cup of tea.
I do love to dance but the wee small hours bit is a tad off putting so I shall have to settle for the kitchen with Alexa on full volume. I didn’t want an Alexa, couldn’t see the point of asking her the weather when I have windows, but I soon discovered that I can ask her to play music and I would be lost without the music. She’s in the kitchen now playing something country music sounding, no idea what, I just ask her to play some music and off she goes. It’s like a musical lucky dip.
Anyway.
I think that, since hitting 50, I have been struggling with the teenage angst I didn’t get as a teenager. I seem to be panicking about my future. For the first time I feel as though I need to make a decision and decision making is not my friend.
When I left school I walked into a job at the bakery where I already worked on Saturday mornings. Immediately I was earning money doing a job I loved so there I stayed, I didn’t bother thinking ahead as I was happy. I loved my colleagues and the customers.
There were some older characters from the village many of whom I remained friends with until they departed. Waggy who’d give me ice cream money when I went on holiday. Waggy who I visited when he went into a home and who “knew the voice” but couldn’t place me. The lady, who’s name I forget but who’s face I can still see, that would come in and point to the fresh cream doughnuts and ask me to save her two when they came in. Iris with whom I exchanged Christmas presents and who never forgot my birthday.
Then there were the workmen who’d come in for their cups of tea and ask me not to make them. The same workmen would send valentines cards, I still have some of them knocking about in my savings box. One, Russell, would come in and holler at the top of his voice “Tina, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on” regardless of who I was serving at the time. Russell had never seen me without my clothes on.
At the bakery I was offered jobs, asked out on dates and even got engaged to one of the bakers. Life was grand so I settled, willingly, into it.
So why now? Why am I now having a small but perfectly formed crisis?
I love my job, probably because I’m rarely there. I love The Husband and my kids are the best the world has ever had the pleasure to meet. Yup, they’re better than yours and yours and yours are feral so yes, mine top yours too. Mine are odder than most but still, they’re polite and quite often clean* I have a home that could do with a dust but is plenty big enough for us and the dog, we get to eat every day, we can switch a light on when it’s dark and turn a tap for drinkable water so all is just as it should be.
But.
This is it, my last chance to do something of note. Perhaps write a book or paint a masterpiece? Should I retrain or just train as I never trained in the first place? I could go to college and get an ology but in what?
It’s a lot, expecting someone who’s only 50 to have decided what it is they want to do with their life but here I am busy trying to decide and the waiting is driving me slowly mad.
Oh, I could just go mad, that would solve many a quandry. When I’m asked what’s for dinner I could just shout “mud and shells fly to the moon whilst the peacocks melt” or something, that’d shut ‘em up. I could bow to bus drivers like the old lady over the road, that’s a thing of note, a legacy of sorts. Perhaps madness is the way forward? It’s got to be better than pondering, hasn’t it?
Oh I don’t know…
Hold up…
Gotta go, Alexa is playing my song…
*I reserve the right to take this back when my kids become drug lords and/or parking attendants
one sock in a bath 