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> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnou

> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?

nextlevelwizard 3y ago
I guess it depends on how people see their mortality. I know people who thought they'd die for sure before they hit 30. For myself 30s was only when the life started to happen.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Funny. For me it's when it ended. And while expected lifespan is some 80+ these days, I can't help but see expected useful life span to top out at 60-ish...
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    I expect you will probably redefine useful by the time you hit 60, or is it actually your belief that senior citizens are useless?
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Probably. Note: this is not a rational belief, just an emotion. I feel that for me, my useful lifespan ends at around 60, meaning I have less than half of that to look forward to (and all of that on a downward quality slope). Objectively, I understand that there are important roles for senior citizens, and I do enjoy the company and services provided by many of such people. Just that trying to imagine myself getting to that age fills me with despair.
sph 3y ago
It was being a little cheeky. And if a massive burnout whose first month was having daily panic attacks and 3 years to recover is garden variety, I am afraid to know what a serious one entails ;) Depression was part of the baggage I was carrying around all my life. It's hard to say, given the state of things, but perhaps depression is one thing I was lucky to shed during this phase.
- tayo42 3y ago
  What exactly is a panic attack? Like your just watching TV and suddenly convinced you'll die? Or was it like at work, something woukd happen and you freak out?
  - flir 3y ago
    I'll attempt an answer: it's your flight-or-flight response kicking in, without any obvious reason for it to do so. Oxygen intake goes up, muscles tense up, adrenaline production kicks in, but there's nothing for your body to "spend" these physiological changes on (like running for your life), so it just sloshes around causing panic attack symptoms (eg sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, detachment, fear of dying).
    - dorkwood 3y ago
      I’ve been walking around thinking I’ve never had a panic attack before, but after reading this I think I’ve actually been having them all my life.
    - DropInIn 3y ago
      Can even include blackouts, muscle spasms, facial/full body paralysis and tingling/pins and needles, and even seizures.... Ask me how I know... /s
    - dspillett 3y ago
      > without any obvious reason for it to do so without any obvious RATIONAL reason for it to do so – sometimes there is an obvious something, or a sequence of somethings, that lead up to the attack, if you trace it back. Like with a phobia where the fear not being based on rational reasoning doesn't make the reason for the fear reaction any less real.
  - JakeAl 3y ago
    It feels like when you're on a plane and it suddenly drops due to turbulence without warning. Only you could be anywhere doing anything.
sharkweek 3y ago
I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old, and most were out of the funk 2-3 years following. Most are doing well now as we hit 40, curios if is struck sooner for our generation.
- Lammy 3y ago
  > I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return e: downvote all you want but people wouldn't have attempted to find meaning for something like this if they hadn't experienced it first
  - hattmall 3y ago
    I think people are down voting because Astrology but yeah it just seems like the coming to terms with reality of adulthood. Midlife crisis is later.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  That might be a "quarter-life crisis" not a mid-life crisis. Mid-life crises are usually 45-50.
  - j0hnyl 3y ago
    The American Psychological Association considers middle age to begin at 35.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      That's great, but the crisis in question happened before 35. The psychology of quarter-life and mid-life crises is also very different. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis
atmavatar 3y ago
If he lives in the US, it's pretty close. The life expectancy of a male in the US is 73.5 years. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm
- pedrosorio 3y ago
  Middle age is generally not defined as 50% of your life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age
  - feitingen 3y ago
    Yes. It should perhaps better be described as a mid-life-expectancy crisis.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    Speaking as a guy in his mid 30s referring to that article, yeah I'm middle aged. Physical? I can feel and am acutely aware I just can't do what I could 20 or even 10 years ago. No more all-nighters for me, my body just can't take it. No more high speed action games for me, my body just can't respond fast enough. Mental? My memory is noticably declining, and my ability to learn new things is significantly deteriorated from my prime. I find myself clinging to stuff I already knew because they give me some sense of familiarity and safety in an increasingly alien world. Social? I've stopped bothering to actively make new friends or otherwise socialize, I just can't be bothered anymore with all the hassle that human relations entail. If I were to describe my current phase in life as the four seasons, I'm in autumn.
    - mstipetic 3y ago
      I was thinking about the learning part, as I’m investing a lot of part learning the phoenix/elixir ecosystem. On the one hand I feel it may be going slower than before, but I’m not sure if it’s because some mental decline or I just know a lot more now and every time I learn some new mechanism I run through a bunch of scenarios in my head from previous experience and have to integrate it with existing knowledge to make it stick. I can no longer just learn the syntax for how the pubsub works, I have to stop and think how to build an architecture around it, how to create an abstraction for my use case, can it be integrated with Postgres triggers etc.
SamPatt 3y ago
I'm not the person you're responding to, but both my parents passed away in their mid-50s, and after my startup failed at 35 I hit something like a midlife crisis. If you believe mid 30s is middle-aged, then it becomes middle-aged - and unfortunately, for some that might be true. Fortunately for me, this crisis led to a serious investment in my health and fitness, and though I obviously cannot predict my future, I'm far healthier now than anytime in my adult life. I fully agree with the sentiment to not waste a midlife crisis.
- mstipetic 3y ago
  I’m 35 and I feel like I’m just getting properly started.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    "Categorical age", if you'll allow me to coin a term for this phenomenon (infancy, childhood, adolescence, middle age, ... - your conception may vary) is more or less a qualification of our personal relationship to time and mortality. So while we might have broad consensus that a 5 year old is a child and a 70 year old is a senior, it's not determined by numerical age. Just a near 1 correlation. After all, we never know our numerical middle age except in retrospect.
solumunus 3y ago
The term is not used so literally.
mcv 3y ago
Yeah, I'm 49 and wondering if I shouldn't have a midlife crisis or something. Although reading the article, is it possible I had mine 12 years ago when I quit employment and became a freelancer? I've been a lot happier since, but it's really still the same career. I've always wanted to create games, though. Whether computer, board or RPG. Should I quit my current freelancing and start doing that then?
- snickerer 3y ago
  I'm 43 now and became a freelancer at 38. I always wanted to write sophisticated game books (think choose-your-own-adventure, but with real impact of your choices for a real story). I wrote a small one to learn about how I feel in the process. And that would be my suggestion. Try the process for some time. Something between one month and half a year. See if you like it, if you get into it, if feel like you want to continue this. The question to answer is: does the daily process of creating games makes you happy and feels right?
DropInIn 3y ago
Someone has no idea about the actual average lifespan of men....
kleene_op 3y ago
> 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? I don't think he knows about second midlife crisis, Pippin.
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  Where's that Simpsons meme when you need it? "This midlife crisis is the worst!" "Now now...this midlife crisis is the worst you've had, so far!"
dougmwne 3y ago
No age is too early for a crisis. One model I have heard is that we need to reinvent ourselves every 7 to 10 years. I had one crisis of reinvention at 30. Now at 38 I am in another one.
2-718-281-828 3y ago
isn't a midlife crisis is just a label for burnout / depression at the end of the day? everybody who is depressed feels like life is stuck and going nowhere.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  A midlife crisis implies, imo, that you haven’t reached the things you wanted to and are running out of time. Not that you aren’t moving forward per se.
  - 2-718-281-828 3y ago
    yes, but practically speaking (and also from painful personal experience) this just seems like semantics. it boils down to the same issues. it's just that the person connects those feelings with age. but then again - no depressed person ever felt young - not even those who are objectively young. even at 20 i felt old. i knew i wasn't old in a general sense but i felt old relative to what ever i thought should have been at that age. same with midlife crisis. luckily i discovered that pattern and i'm getting better at dealing with it.
- ProblemFactory 3y ago
  Burnout and depression can be connected to, but aren't the same thing as a mid-life crisis. I would distinguish a mid-life crisis (or in the positive case, mid-life inspiration) by the realisation that you don't have infinite time left to do everything you dream to do. In your 20s, it's easy to think that your entire life is still ahead of you, and you will have time for everything. It doesn't matter if you spend a few years in a mediocre relationship, a career that won't work out in the long run, on a terrible startup idea, and so on. Somewhere in your 30s you realise that you do need to get started on what you really dream to do, or you might never have the chance to. Whether it's a crisis or inspiration depends on how far off your previous life was from it.
dainiusse 3y ago
Yep. Sounds like this was just a burnout :) The real midlife crisis will happen later :)

> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?

nextlevelwizard 3y ago

I guess it depends on how people see their mortality. I know people who thought they'd die for sure before they hit 30. For myself 30s was only when the life started to happen.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Funny. For me it's when it ended. And while expected lifespan is some 80+ these days, I can't help but see expected useful life span to top out at 60-ish...
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  I expect you will probably redefine useful by the time you hit 60, or is it actually your belief that senior citizens are useless?
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Probably. Note: this is not a rational belief, just an emotion. I feel that for me, my useful lifespan ends at around 60, meaning I have less than half of that to look forward to (and all of that on a downward quality slope). Objectively, I understand that there are important roles for senior citizens, and I do enjoy the company and services provided by many of such people. Just that trying to imagine myself getting to that age fills me with despair.

sph 3y ago

It was being a little cheeky. And if a massive burnout whose first month was having daily panic attacks and 3 years to recover is garden variety, I am afraid to know what a serious one entails ;) Depression was part of the baggage I was carrying around all my life. It's hard to say, given the state of things, but perhaps depression is one thing I was lucky to shed during this phase.

tayo42 3y ago
What exactly is a panic attack? Like your just watching TV and suddenly convinced you'll die? Or was it like at work, something woukd happen and you freak out?
- flir 3y ago
  I'll attempt an answer: it's your flight-or-flight response kicking in, without any obvious reason for it to do so. Oxygen intake goes up, muscles tense up, adrenaline production kicks in, but there's nothing for your body to "spend" these physiological changes on (like running for your life), so it just sloshes around causing panic attack symptoms (eg sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, detachment, fear of dying).
  - dorkwood 3y ago
    I’ve been walking around thinking I’ve never had a panic attack before, but after reading this I think I’ve actually been having them all my life.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Can even include blackouts, muscle spasms, facial/full body paralysis and tingling/pins and needles, and even seizures.... Ask me how I know... /s
  - dspillett 3y ago
    > without any obvious reason for it to do so without any obvious RATIONAL reason for it to do so – sometimes there is an obvious something, or a sequence of somethings, that lead up to the attack, if you trace it back. Like with a phobia where the fear not being based on rational reasoning doesn't make the reason for the fear reaction any less real.
- JakeAl 3y ago
  It feels like when you're on a plane and it suddenly drops due to turbulence without warning. Only you could be anywhere doing anything.

sharkweek 3y ago

I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old, and most were out of the funk 2-3 years following. Most are doing well now as we hit 40, curios if is struck sooner for our generation.

Lammy 3y ago
> I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return e: downvote all you want but people wouldn't have attempted to find meaning for something like this if they hadn't experienced it first
- hattmall 3y ago
  I think people are down voting because Astrology but yeah it just seems like the coming to terms with reality of adulthood. Midlife crisis is later.
pclmulqdq 3y ago
That might be a "quarter-life crisis" not a mid-life crisis. Mid-life crises are usually 45-50.
- j0hnyl 3y ago
  The American Psychological Association considers middle age to begin at 35.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    That's great, but the crisis in question happened before 35. The psychology of quarter-life and mid-life crises is also very different. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

atmavatar 3y ago

If he lives in the US, it's pretty close. The life expectancy of a male in the US is 73.5 years. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

pedrosorio 3y ago
Middle age is generally not defined as 50% of your life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_age
- feitingen 3y ago
  Yes. It should perhaps better be described as a mid-life-expectancy crisis.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  Speaking as a guy in his mid 30s referring to that article, yeah I'm middle aged. Physical? I can feel and am acutely aware I just can't do what I could 20 or even 10 years ago. No more all-nighters for me, my body just can't take it. No more high speed action games for me, my body just can't respond fast enough. Mental? My memory is noticably declining, and my ability to learn new things is significantly deteriorated from my prime. I find myself clinging to stuff I already knew because they give me some sense of familiarity and safety in an increasingly alien world. Social? I've stopped bothering to actively make new friends or otherwise socialize, I just can't be bothered anymore with all the hassle that human relations entail. If I were to describe my current phase in life as the four seasons, I'm in autumn.
  - mstipetic 3y ago
    I was thinking about the learning part, as I’m investing a lot of part learning the phoenix/elixir ecosystem. On the one hand I feel it may be going slower than before, but I’m not sure if it’s because some mental decline or I just know a lot more now and every time I learn some new mechanism I run through a bunch of scenarios in my head from previous experience and have to integrate it with existing knowledge to make it stick. I can no longer just learn the syntax for how the pubsub works, I have to stop and think how to build an architecture around it, how to create an abstraction for my use case, can it be integrated with Postgres triggers etc.

SamPatt 3y ago

I'm not the person you're responding to, but both my parents passed away in their mid-50s, and after my startup failed at 35 I hit something like a midlife crisis. If you believe mid 30s is middle-aged, then it becomes middle-aged - and unfortunately, for some that might be true. Fortunately for me, this crisis led to a serious investment in my health and fitness, and though I obviously cannot predict my future, I'm far healthier now than anytime in my adult life. I fully agree with the sentiment to not waste a midlife crisis.

mstipetic 3y ago
I’m 35 and I feel like I’m just getting properly started.
- maxbond 3y ago
  "Categorical age", if you'll allow me to coin a term for this phenomenon (infancy, childhood, adolescence, middle age, ... - your conception may vary) is more or less a qualification of our personal relationship to time and mortality. So while we might have broad consensus that a 5 year old is a child and a 70 year old is a senior, it's not determined by numerical age. Just a near 1 correlation. After all, we never know our numerical middle age except in retrospect.

solumunus 3y ago

The term is not used so literally.

mcv 3y ago

Yeah, I'm 49 and wondering if I shouldn't have a midlife crisis or something. Although reading the article, is it possible I had mine 12 years ago when I quit employment and became a freelancer? I've been a lot happier since, but it's really still the same career. I've always wanted to create games, though. Whether computer, board or RPG. Should I quit my current freelancing and start doing that then?

snickerer 3y ago
I'm 43 now and became a freelancer at 38. I always wanted to write sophisticated game books (think choose-your-own-adventure, but with real impact of your choices for a real story). I wrote a small one to learn about how I feel in the process. And that would be my suggestion. Try the process for some time. Something between one month and half a year. See if you like it, if you get into it, if feel like you want to continue this. The question to answer is: does the daily process of creating games makes you happy and feels right?

DropInIn 3y ago

Someone has no idea about the actual average lifespan of men....

kleene_op 3y ago

> 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? I don't think he knows about second midlife crisis, Pippin.

yowlingcat 3y ago
Where's that Simpsons meme when you need it? "This midlife crisis is the worst!" "Now now...this midlife crisis is the worst you've had, so far!"

dougmwne 3y ago

No age is too early for a crisis. One model I have heard is that we need to reinvent ourselves every 7 to 10 years. I had one crisis of reinvention at 30. Now at 38 I am in another one.

2-718-281-828 3y ago

isn't a midlife crisis is just a label for burnout / depression at the end of the day? everybody who is depressed feels like life is stuck and going nowhere.

jncfhnb 3y ago
A midlife crisis implies, imo, that you haven’t reached the things you wanted to and are running out of time. Not that you aren’t moving forward per se.
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  yes, but practically speaking (and also from painful personal experience) this just seems like semantics. it boils down to the same issues. it's just that the person connects those feelings with age. but then again - no depressed person ever felt young - not even those who are objectively young. even at 20 i felt old. i knew i wasn't old in a general sense but i felt old relative to what ever i thought should have been at that age. same with midlife crisis. luckily i discovered that pattern and i'm getting better at dealing with it.
ProblemFactory 3y ago
Burnout and depression can be connected to, but aren't the same thing as a mid-life crisis. I would distinguish a mid-life crisis (or in the positive case, mid-life inspiration) by the realisation that you don't have infinite time left to do everything you dream to do. In your 20s, it's easy to think that your entire life is still ahead of you, and you will have time for everything. It doesn't matter if you spend a few years in a mediocre relationship, a career that won't work out in the long run, on a terrible startup idea, and so on. Somewhere in your 30s you realise that you do need to get started on what you really dream to do, or you might never have the chance to. Whether it's a crisis or inspiration depends on how far off your previous life was from it.

dainiusse 3y ago

Yep. Sounds like this was just a burnout :) The real midlife crisis will happen later :)