But, as you come to grips what is important and want isn’t you embrace what your life is and will be all about as an adult.
The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shame fiction to me.
With the help of our knowledge bank, you can choose for variations in your new neighborhood by:
But to zero in on the best place for you you’ll have to visit and schedule time to explore potential new homes in a region.
Oh, darn!
Adult Life Stages
Part One: She’s Leaving Home, Not Living Alone (Buy Buy)
Part Two: Failing at Growing Up
Part Three: Love, Marriage, Baby Carriage, or …
Part Four: Crisis and Pivots for 28 -32 Year Olds
Part Five: Making It – Ages 30 – 38
Mortality, Magical Thinking and Denial
Mark Maron. “I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to life forever either.
That sounds terrible.
I have no idea what happens after we die.
I don’t think about it much at all.
I’m guessing probably nothing.
It’s the transition from life to nothing that terrifies me.
Being terrified of death is part of the human condition.
Depending on how you look at it in terms of accepting that it’s the one undeniable truth of life, it can be motivating or complete devastating.
It can make you appreciate life and savor it or it can render almost everything pointless.
I fluctuate between the two, depending on how much coffee I’ve had and what petty bullshit is consuming.” pg. 343
We have reached the halfway mark.
Yet, even as we are reaching our prime, we begin to see there is a place where it finishes.
Time starts to squeeze.
It is a time book both danger and opportunity.
If the average lifespan stretches somewhere between your 80s and 90s, then sometime in the decade between your mid-thirties to mid-40s you come to grips with your mortality.
No more magical thinking.
No more living in denial.
But, during this time people are normally settled in their life and know what is important to them.
John Hodgman. “I have rarely been as happy.
I could pay this debt, and many other actual money debts, in part because I had just made a bunch of money.” pg 128
Second Adulthood Metamorphosis
Erik Erikson’s Theory identifies the ages of 40-64 as the second stage of 
adulthood.
Approximate Age: Adulthood ( 40 – 64)
Significant Relationship: Household, workmates
Existential Question: Can I make my life count?
Examples: Work, parenthood
Psychosocial Crisis: Generativity vs. Stagnation
Virtues: Care
People either make progress in their career or the opposite.
They tread lightly in their career unsure if this is what they want to do for the rest of their working lives.
Let’s take the generatively side first.
Parenting and Purpose
Parents enjoy raising their children and participating in activities,.
Even if all else seems to go wrong, parents find a strong sense of purpose.
You’ll find families across the United States, and throughout communities in the West.
In our lifestyle profile segmentation approach you’ll encounter six zip codes where more accomplished families reside.
Wealthy Influentials and Wireless Resorters:
- Washington: Mukilteo
- Colorado: Louisville
- California: Santa Cruz, Naples and Rancho Santa Margarita.
- New Hampshire: Cornish
Lifestyle Profiles:
Ages: 35-54
Life Stages: Families
Community Neighbors:
Wealthy Influentials
12Y1C1, Brite Lites Lil City – WIDM, Digitally Mobiles (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA)
13F2C1, Upward Bound – WIDM, Digitally Mobiles (Louisville, CO)
17F2S2, Beltway Boomers – WIES Exurb Society (Santa Cruz, CA)
18F2S2, Kids & Cul-de-Sacs – WIES Exurb Society (Mukilteo, WA)
29F2U1, American Dreams – WIPL Portfolio Locals (Naples, CA)
Community Neighbors:
Wireless Resorters
20F2T1, Fast-Track Families – WRPR Premier Resorts (Cornish, NH)
But entering adulthood doesn’t come easy for many.
Is This All There Is?
Like the end-of-your-twenties transition, the end of your thirties marks a sober transition into full adulthood.
What’s at stake?
Gail Sheehy: “We must reexamine our purposes and reevaluate how to spend our resources from now on.
Why am I doing all of this?
What do I really believe in?
No matter what we have been doing, there will be parts of our selves that have been suppressed and now need to find expression; “bad” feelings will demand acknowledgement along with the good.
Whatever rung of achievement he/she has reached, the person at 40 usually feels stale, restless, burdened and unappreciated.”
He or she worries about his/her health.
He/she wonders, “is this all there is?”
Many persons in their 40s experience a major shift of emphasis away from pouring all their energies into their own advancement.
A more tender, feeling side comes into play.
They may become more interested in developing an ethical self.
Internal Clocks Ticking
Chris Erskine. “There is, in each of us, an internal clock that we start to hear ticking at 45 or 50, making us crave new things.
It ignites in us a risk-taking, sort of a second adolescence.
Last year, my buddy Bob took off on his motorcycle and rode through 48 states.
His whole life a banker, my pal Craig opened his first restaurant.
My college roommate Jack took up woodworking.
There is a late-in-life wanderlust in all of that, and it makes me wonder what might be next for me.”
If a person is not comfortable with the way their life is progressing, they’re usually regretful about the decisions that they have made in the past and feel a sense of uselessness.
All of us have the chance to rework the narrow identity by which we defined ourselves in the first half of life.
Authenticity Crisis
And those of us who don’t make the most of the opportunity will have a full on authenticity crisis.
- Experiencing a fading purpose of stereotype roles.
- Questioning absolute answers.
- Wallowing in a midlife crisis
- Re-examining ourselves.
- Giving expression to our suppressed parts.
- Shifting from a focus on advancement only.
- Developing an ethical self.
- Believing this is my last chance to be a success.
Maron. “When I started the podcast I had failed.
I was in my mid-forties.
My comedy career hadn’t panned out.
I had no real prospects in my mind. I was broke and coming out of a second childless marriage.
I thought I was the victim for a while, but then started to see my part in my position in life.
I had to accept it and try to move on.
I had to really let it all go in my heart and just start the podcast with no expectations and no income and keep working.
I believed I wasn’t every going to be a relevant comic and that all my opportunities were behind me.
I was old and had missed my window.” pg. 280
Do you become more practical during your second adulthood?
Absolutely.
Credit Cards and the Gig Economy
Hodgman. “I wrote for magazines and websites, and I was mostly paid in small checks and journalist swag.
But you cannot support even a small family in Manhattan with a designer chef’s knife, some mail-order beef jerky, a thornproof wax cotton jacket, or the fond memories of a junket to a Caribbean island where man shot fine tequila into my mouth from a Super Soaker.
“I don’t remember how high my credit card debt got as I continued to ignore this fact.
Many tens of thousands.” pg 128
He shares the unglamorous and behind the scenes life of a freelance writer in the gig economy.
Trying not to look at the ballooning balance on each credit card’s monthly statement.
Hodgman. “I became adept at averting my eyes from the total in shame as I paid the minimum month after month.
Credit card companies loved me.
What my grandparents had done for my parents, what my parents had done for me, I would not be able to do for my own children.
Now at the end of the long list of squandered advantages was this house in Massachusetts, my mother’s house, which on many panicky 3 a.m. awakenings I would darkly fantasize about liquidating for cash.” pg. 129
Does Money Buy Happiness?
Ask John Hodgman.
Hodgman. “Then I wrote a book, and then I went on television, and then I had money, real grown-up money.
The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shame fiction to me.
Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constant work, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous.” pg. 129
And, as you come to grips what is important and want isn’t you embrace what your life is and will be all about as an adult.
But wait, there’s more!
Part Seven: Renewal or Resignation in Your Mid-40s