Forever Young
How having a midlife crisis made me more creative
In 2023, I had a pretty sizeable existential crisis.
It started when an old friend passed away. A gorgeous soul, Joe, whom everyone adored. He was someone I knew from my past life as an actor. A group of us used to host a tent at Secret Garden Party where punters could come and have their own funerals (our tag line was ‘putting the fun back into FUNeral’, naturally). We were initially a circle of old pals from drama school, but soon we invited some worthy stragglers to join the fold. One of whom was Joe.
Joe was THE ultimate good time guy - someone who could ingest a truly inordinate amount of recreational substances and still be standing, making everyone cups of tea, the next morning. He had a wicked sense of humour - as soon as he entered the vicinity people would be heaving and gagging with laughter. And when he wasn’t gleefully inducing hysteria, he’d be loudly declaring how much fun he was having, how beautiful and kind all the people were around him - truly heartfelt sentiments that would normally render someone into an absolute cringe merchant - but, with Joe, felt easeful and authentic, and spoke to how well he seemed to be able to just be in the present moment with the people around him; how effortlessly he made everyone feel seen and valued.
It was such a shock, then, when I received the gently-voiced phone call from a mutual friend.
*
Over 200 people came to Joe’s funeral, the crowd bursting through the door and out into the garden. He was only 40 and a simply beautiful human being.
I was sad that he was no longer here, that it had happened suddenly without goodbyes, but most of all, (here we go Harriet, make it all about yourself…) I felt deeply perturbed by the fact someone so close to my own age… (that’s the ticket…) someone only half way through their life, who was so well loved and seemed to be getting things right, had disappeared in such an unprecedented manner.
I recognised, sharply, that there was no protection for any of us. No prize nor punishment for living the best life nor getting things ‘right’, just an unspecified quota of time to make the most of what we’ve got, whilst we’ve got it.
At this stage the crisis hadn’t fully kicked off, but I started to feel vulnerable in a way I hadn’t experienced before - some unrecognisable feeling bubbling up from my centre and popping on my surface with a jolt.
A few weeks later one of my favourite writers, Martin Amis, died and this had an inflammatory effect on what I was slowly beginning to recognise as burgeoning existential anxiety.
*
I had read my first Amis books when I was a tender young thing - beached on the sofa after my A Level exams, contemplating my steps forward in life. I was very much at the starting line of adulthood back then, with life stretched out luxuriantly before me. The world (well, the south east of England..) was at my feet, and time (that awkward early naughties period, when Britney and low-rise jeans were still fashionable) was in my hands. I gobbled up Amis’s books and loved his writing; it felt audacious and exploratory - much like my attitude to life at that point… Like anything was possible.
Hearing that Amis had died, that a figurative ‘changing of the guard’ was occurring, had startled me into re-evaluating where I was in my life now, and what, exactly, I deemed myself to have achieved since those heady, halcyon days in my late teens.
I found myself having an overwrought response to the news; sobbing on the carpet, smart phone in hand, scrolling through the black and white photos and online eulogies, as a slurry of tears and snot cascaded down my face.
I was upset, far too upset quite frankly. Martin Amis had died. But so too, it seemed, had an aspect of my youth and sense of worldly possibility.
Dear reader, I think it was safe to say that the crisis was now fully underway.
*
I spun out badly. I felt as though a whirling dervish had taken up residence within my skull and I teetered on the cusp of a suffocating panic attack for days on end.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how carefree I had felt back in my youth, how tremendously potent and enchanting the promise of adult life had been. How I had taken it for granted - that things would just work out in my favour, that life decisions would be made and executed with ease, that somehow the elements of my existence would come together and provide an adequate and acceptable result.
Yet, when I compared these (let’s face it, quite unfounded) notions with where I was in my life now, my stomach dropped and lurched, and I realised with a cold sweat that I was, let’s say, a country mile away from where I had initially presumed I would end up in life.
Indeed, here I was, on the wrong side of 35; muddled, lonely and insolvent - my circumstances resembling absolutely NONE of the features that my naive adolescent mind had so presumptuously forecast… reader, the math of my life just wasn’t mathing.
*
But how had I let this happen?? I had ideas, good ideas, about what my life should look like and yet all this time I’d been patiently waiting for something. It’s just, now that I came to look at it, I couldn’t for the life of me think what that thing actually was…
It hadn’t bothered me that throughout my 20s I was disoriented and prone to flagrant escapism; it’s socially acceptable (maybe even endearing) to be directionless and a little bit wafty during those years. You have great skin, minimal life experience and an inexplicable notion of your own significance - not managing to make clear and cohesive steps forward in life is completely on-brand (prudent, even - to use one’s 20s as a period of mistake-making and data collection).
But was it a great look in the run up to middle age, I wondered?
I saw that the good grace in my life was diminishing rapidly and knew it was time to confront myself. Because, in the sleepless throes of this quite chilling crisis, I realised that for years I had been keeping things nicely ticking along, so that I constantly felt a sense of imminent potential… but had failed to take the plunge to actually move towards it.
Reader, I had held out on my life… only to find life holding out on me.
*
I began to recognise an unhealthy and fruitless pattern within myself: I had an addiction to remaining in a state of pure potential. It kept me feeling safe, unscathed… and brimming with promise.
Living in this perpetual place of dreamy potential but never actualising it had served, unconsciously, as a protection against my own perceived inadequacies - it meant I could inhabit a realm of idealism, never having to look myself, or reality, fully in the eye and never having to experience the consequences of putting myself out into the world. Because to conceptualise an idea is far cleaner and more convenient than facing the realities of bringing it to fruition - which inevitably involves mistakes, potential failure, a surrendering of control and perhaps the most scary and ever-looming of all my fears… taking RISK.
The risk of things not working out, the risk of people not liking me, the risk of an idea not being as ‘good’ in reality as in my mind, the risk of exposure… embarrassment… uncertainty… And the risk that it might not be the right choice, that there might be something better, bigger, more suited, more shiny out there - yes, I couldn’t possibly risk making myself unavailable by embarking on the wrong path now could I???
So I coped by keeping my options open and holding out for the very best.
But ironically, the more I staved off taking a decisive risk, the more that became the biggest risk of them all. I felt like the ‘eternal bachelor’ who resolutely refuses to marry his loyal, sweet girlfriend on the off chance that Emily Ratajkowski might randomly call him and want to go out… only to eventually find himself all alone, with his options and time dwindling away for good.
Yes, it seems that failing to make a decision about your life is a whole decision in itself. And continuing to keep your options open past a certain point, basically leaves you… with none.
So I decided to get realistic, to say ‘no’ to a range of potential avenues and instead act on one specific path; knowing full well that the whole thing might not work, would inevitably be hard, that I might embarrass myself and not know what to expect, but regardless, whatever happened, committed action would move me forwards and provide the crucial experiential information I needed to forge a way forward. But most of all, dear reader, it meant that I would be on the field partaking in life rather than sitting on the side lines, hedging my bets whilst dreaming of a ‘perfect future’ that I was silently refusing to bring into existence.
I got to business about doing things differently.
*
On the outside, I was by all accounts… having a midlife crisis. As evidenced by my partaking in an array of classic tropes -
I went on a string of lonely dates with burly, disinterested men in their 20s (all at least a decade younger than me).
I embarked on a kind of frenzied navel-gazing marathon which involved completely exhausting the self-help section in my local library and running the YouTube algorithm for videos on ‘How to find your unique purpose’ well and truly into the ground.
And I wrote some extraordinarily pensive and rather morose poetry that will never ever see the light of day.
Pretty. Classic. Stuff.
But whilst my life operated as an extended cliche on the outside, something quite different and transformative was shifting within me.
I started taking more risks with my creative work and in my relationships. I made a conscious decision to get fully out of my comfort zone and lift the proverbial bonnet on all the sneaky coping mechanisms I had kept stashed away for all these years.
I stopped making the artwork I thought I should make, and started to make what I was genuinely excited about with no mind as to whether it was conventional, palatable or acceptable to people. I extended my practice to include writing, as it felt like a more immediate way of expressing myself. I had staved it off previously because I hadn’t felt competent enough, but after some months of steady practice, I started to publish my work online.
I got myself on camera, which was something of an ordeal, but I knew it was an imperative aspect of the business I wanted to build, and so after several weeks of daily clammy-palmed practising, swearing, and frustrating retakes, I felt adept enough to put video content online.
I allowed myself to be more authentic; more idiosyncratic; more weird, nerdy and intense, in both my work and my relationships, knowing that the right people would stay, and the unsuited ones would naturally drift away.
Perhaps most importantly, I became my own authority; as opposed to looking outwards for permission and validation, as I had always done previously. I stepped out of the mode of waiting for something to happen, and into a sense of having active ownership over my life.
All of these efforts culminated into a newly formed relationship with risk and uncertainty, and over time, my intense fear and various coping mechanisms began to gently dissipate and drift out of my life.
It took a while, but eventually I sensed that I had shifted gears from my old life and into a completely new way of operating in the world, and for the first time in years, perhaps ever, I sensed I possessed a creative potency that might actually be impactful to people.
Dear reader, I can’t lie to you - I was genuinely bruised and quite beaten by the whole affair, but nonetheless, after decades of unhelpful procrastination, rumination and lofty mental escapism, I was delighted to have finally made it onto the playing field of life. It was less fantastical than I had imagined, and yet so much better.
*
I think people have mid-life crises for a lot of different reasons, but I suspect always as some sort of wake up call. If I hadn’t had mine, Lord knows where I would have ended up, but it certainly wouldn’t have been anywhere I actually wanted to be. I consider the whole experience a painful gift; a sharp elbow to the ribs prompting me back into alignment with a deeper, truer part of myself.
It had truly shocked me - how easy it can be to lose touch with yourself, to drift and dally, and then wake up one day, moored on a totally different continent to your original Self.
In many ways, that’s when the true creative journey really begins - we can certainly be going through the motions until that point; ticking boxes, playing things out - but the quest back to one’s true Self, I do believe that’s the path where the real treasure is nestled.
So all that’s left to say is - if like me, you have found yourself consistently trapped in creative quandary, or perhaps seduced by the ‘idea’ of things whilst simultaneously failing to root that vision into the real world - then I hope an existential crisis of the highest magnitude befalls you, dear reader. It might just do your hopes and dreams the world of good.
The wise & wonderful Martin Amis discussing mid-life crises (extract taken from the Charlie Rose Show/YouTube).
Further reading/listening:
Fantastic episode from my all-time fave podcast ‘This Jungian Life’, all about how to navigate options and make life decisions: listen here. (You can also find the episode on iTunes/Spotify if you want to listen without adverts).
I highly recommend this fantastic article about mid-life crises by Psychologist and author Dr Sharon Blackie via her Substack page: read here.
Check out the brilliant Florence Given’s article about choosing your life path via her Substack page: read here. (FYI this piece is paywalled, but you can get a 7 day free trial in order to have a sneaky ganders!)
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Internet friends, I would love to hear about your experiences - please drop a comment below if you have had a transformational life crisis of your own!
Fabulous piece of writing!