You Pierced What? Welcome to Mid-Life!

 JENN McKINLAY: Well, hello, mid-life crisis!

Nose stud! Scale of pain from 1-10 with 1 being none, I'd say it was a 2.

I was on the phone the other day, catching up with my former college roommate, a person who has known adult me for almost 40 years. We talked about what was happening in our lives and when I finished, she said, “So, you’re writing fantasy novels, running 5Ks (see photo below), and now you have a nose stud (see photo above). Overall, how do you feel your mid-life crisis is going?”

Me and H2 - Rock and Roll 5K - it was 44 degrees!!!

I laughed and said, “This from a woman who is selling her house and traveling the country in an RV for the next few years to find her perfect retirement location?” She also laughed as we acknowledged we were both managing our middle years in different and surprising ways. (I have always loathed running and she never planned to leave CT).

Side note: neither of us have bought a sports car or traded in our husbands for a younger model. LOL.

My question to you, Reds, is what did your middle-age years look like, what did you do, or plan to do to embrace the next chapter?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Middle years….When was that, again? Remind me?  (Wait, I just re-read your opening paragraph. You have a nose stud? Did I know that?)  Anyway, my middle years are long gone, and I got through them with a strange but inadvertent combination of ignoring them and embracing them. I’m not sure I ever thought of “mid-life crisis.”  I was unmarried and unattached between the ages of 21 and 40, and happily so.  Married at 40, working 24/7 and truly loving it. There was nothing else I wanted to do, and nowhere else I wanted to be. I just wanted to be better at what I was already dong.  Then, after a bit of turmoil,  married Jonathan when I was 46. 

Hmm. I may be the ONLY person, come to think of it, who traded in her husband for an OLDER model. :-) 

So was that before or after mid-life?

I loved my mid-years, and valued them. I’m better now than ever, but I see it as so much of a process.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: How did I not know about the nose stud, either? Is this since the last time we zoomed? I say, “good for you,” and “ouch!”

Middle years? Oh, I did the classic. Wrote a novel. Got a divorce. (For the first time in my life I had my own money! Oh, it was so incredibly liberating!) Married slightly younger model. Bought a sports car. Started making trips to England by myself. (Can you shout “liberating!!!)

The writing, the husband, and the solo trips have stuck. The red sports car, not, alas. I had to come to grips with reality when the warranty ran out. 

HALLIE EPHRON: Mine was a gradual shift. (I’ve always had a keep-one-foot-on-the-dock-and-one-on-the-boat approach to change.) 

The big thing was that I started to write fiction. I’d started a freelance writing business which gave me the flexibility to write stuff that, for quite a long time, I did not get paid for. Meanwhile my daughters were flying the coop and my Jerry was our anchor. I was also letting my hair go gray and Jerry and I were ticking travel destinations off our bucket list. And buying another new white Honda Civic every so often to replace a 14-year-old one. I’m not a big risk taker. 

RHYS BOWEN: It’s funny that my next stand-alone, MRS ENDICOTT’S SPLENDID ADVENTURE, has the theme of midlife crisis. Dumped by her husband after being the model wife she takes off for the south of France and forges a whole new life there. (Maybe a bit of a living vicariously write?) Anyway my fifties were much better than my forties when husband was laid off and I had three kids in college. Last kid went to college. We traveled and I took the risk of switching from a reliable income writing YA books to writing what I like to read. The first Constable Evans novel got a teeny advance and a print run of 2500. I think it’s worked out okay. If I hadn’t switched I’d never have made all these wonderful friends and been part of this amazing community. 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I got my @$$ tattooed when I turned 36, does that count? Maybe I had an early start on the midlife "say yes to changes" thing, because that's around the time I started to write. 

 

In some ways, I agree with Rhys: my fifties were easier at times than my forties (I had a baby at 39, after all!) And my sixties (so far) are even better. I feel freer, more myself, and more willing to take risks than I was when I was younger. I can't see going in for a piercing, but I could definitely sign up for another tattoo... 

LUCY BURDETTE: whenever someone asks how I started writing, how I switched careers from clinical psychology to mystery writer, I say it was my midlife crisis. I don’t know how else to describe it that would make sense. It certainly wasn’t planned, but I’ve never taken the straight route to anything. The middle years were filled with angst, so I am really enjoying being settled with John and having lots of adventures writing and otherwise along the way.

JENN: In reading these answers, I am reminded of why I absolutely adore the Reds. We're all so different and so uniquely ourselves and there's no judgement just a lot of support. And the nose stud happened in December. Not planned - a totally spur of the moment - why not? - at the mall. LOL.

Your turn readers! What did/does/will mid-life look for you?