What's left in life?

[Sliverofdarkness]

Bit of a weird one, but I just don't know what's left to look forward to in life... Late 40s, have travelled, got married, bought a house, had kids and feel like they don't need me much anymore. Got a job but feel like I'm too old to progress, as I took a long career break with the kids. My managers are 10 years younger than me so I feel pretty disillusioned and not on great pay.
I'm finding it hard to be interested in clothes or my appearance or going out socially. I cant go out on any work outings as I work part time and the work events are on on my day off when I'm with the kids.
I feel sorry for my husband as I can't get out of this rut of being boring.
What can I do? Life feels constantly busy, but also totally boring.

It's very easy to just dissappear into being a Mum and always being on standby for others. I felt similar in ny early forties. Was part time at work, felt like I was spare part there and not valued. Felt increasingly like a door mat at home and had no hobbies for myself. It took time but I made big changes. Took on lots extra at work to make myself employable then went for a full time promotion. This has been challenging but actually great for my mental health and bank balance. As a result we have been able to move to a much nicer house, I can be the host and have a much better social life. I can travel more and have space for my hobbies. It's been stressful at time but I am feeling like me again and not just someone's Mum.

What you need is to feel like you are achieving something. That doesn't have to be career related but think about what you want the next phase of your life to look like.

Find time to go out with your friends/dh/ go to a museum or art gallery or to a film/ comedy night/ do an art class or go for a dance class. Find the time, it’s there, you may need to arrange play dates/ get a family member over to mind etc etc but do something

What do you want to know before you die?

Do you want to know about ancient Egypt or how to catch a fish or Greek philosophy? Read the Booker Prize winner's list?

Learning, whatever the age, for enjoyment. Basically.

Friend felt like this.

She was in therapy. After a few sessions she decided to sod everything.. You only live once.
Sold virtually everything she owned. Packed kids in a car and hooked up a caravan and took off for Europe.

Travelled around for a while picking up various jobs, doing her online business and home schooling dc
She pulled into a car park late one night. In the morning whilst dc were still asleep she stepped out to drink her coffee.
She said she felt so peaceful and at home she decided to stay for a while.
A while turned into permanent.
Her dc have taken to the southern European life style and her health has improved so much she looks so much younger than her years.
Best thing she has ever done

Sometimes you have to do something incredibly scary to kick start your life,

I felt like this when I had postnatal depression. Like I was in a bubble and couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't take drugs to get better (very mentally unwell father and I am scared of them for all sorts of irrational reasons).

Things I did:

• Joined a gym, started weightlifting and set small goals (like being able to lift an extra kg each week) - the endorphins helped
• Took up a hobby with total strangers and forced myself to go once a month. No arguments, my hobby is sacred and husband has to have the kids that evening
• Read more books to have things to talk about. Put timers on phone to stop doomscrolling.
• Forced myself to reconnect with old friends and do things. Interesting things like going to the theatre or exhibitions or going kayaking. Also gives something to talk about. I stayed away from just catching up for coffee for a year or two as I'd run out of stuff to talk about and end up feeling worse about myself. So suggesting catch ups but with a thing in mind like a movie or something is better.
• Forced my family to respect I needed to have 'me' time as well - just an hour or two once a week where I could go sit in a room and be silent and read or just stare into space with no one bothering me. Part of the problem was I was always 'available' even if it was just for boring stuff like finding socks or making chips meaning I was never able to actually recharge
• Took up a volunteer position in my spare time.
• Got a new job. It's actually still rubbish but a change is as good as a rest :-)
• Leaned into doing proper fun stuff with the kids on the weekends, not just ferrying them around to playdates but actually arranging fun quality time stuff with them like taking them to concerts or shows or streetfood markets to try new stuff. So I didn't feel like a servant any more I felt like a custodian of experiences for them, which is way cooler and more fun.

Good luck. I hope it gets better for you x

OP, you sound depressed. I would go to your doctor. They will screen you for it.

Best of luck xxx

Set a date when you will start your new regime and write yourself a timetable of things you want to do.
Treat it like a job.
For me, I had a bit of this when I retired, I joined a gym, an outdoor swimming club and an art class.
Then I realised that although we are financially secure I need the social interaction of work so I got a job with young adults with learning disabilities. It's very part time but it is meaningful and I look forward to going.

My husband felt like you at 40 yrs old. He died at the age of 48 yrs and when he was dying we talked about if he had any regrets or what he would have done differently had it known what he now knows.
He said, he would have taken time to find things he truly enjoyed and done more of the things he loved.
Are there things you have been too busy with boring stuff to do that you love?

Not silly at all! I started playing the recorder again - when I'm home alone 🤣
Also swimming - was a great swimmer at school but just stopped. Took it back up at 55 and 2 years later still loving it.
See also things you wish you'd done as a child - I now go to dance classes.

What do you mean?

Have you had blood tests recently OP? Vitamin deficiencies or an under active thyroid can make you feel flat.

Music, art, theatre, literature, nature, travel, exercise, sports, local hobby groups, true crime documentaries, interest areas, languages. There is so much out there!

Why can't you go to a team event on a non-working day? Is that really a 'dont want to' (which is totally fine) or genuinely a 'can't'?

I’m 45 and have incurable cancer. I have a 50% shot at still being alive in 10 years when my youngest turns 18. I’ve had a lot of time to think about all the things I want to be doing if I don’t die in the next couple years.

I want to retrain after a 20 year career that I had to leave due to illness and start a business. I want to do some improvements on my house, eventually make a little self contained Airbnb that will allow me and Dh to not have to work too much. I want to travel with the kids - Europe, a safari, Bali, Japan, Sri Lanka. I want to be there for all their competitions and plays and assemblies and volunteer to help with school. I want to take them away for little weekends together. I have a horse that I can’t ride at the moment, but one day I want to ride again and I have goals for things I want us to do together. I want to walk another Camino (I did one just before I was diagnosed). I want to plan things for Dh and I to do together when life settles and to start thinking about retirement (I hope I’m still alive to get there). I’d love to be able to run again or at least hike regularly. I’d like to do some more volunteering.

Think about if you only had, say, 5 years left. What would you do with those 5 years? It becomes really easy to see when you know you probably don’t have much time left.

Presumably death?

Thanks for posting op. You're not alone. I'm 42 and feel flat.

I've realised I've 'peaked' in several things - we're not going to move to a bigger house as the step up is too costly, I've reached my max potential/realistic capacity at work (not that high really), I've peaked physically (I started a sport in my 30s and reached a pretty high standard, but I got burnt out and no longer race). I've finished with babies (dc are tweens), married 15 years etc.

I'm on hrt which has helped a bit, but I'm still down. There's a poem I can't find, but it's at the start of the book, 'The Valley of the Dolls' which is about drugs and stardom, but it works for middle age too, I feel. All the striving and antipation and then you summit and wonder what was that all about? What's next?

I do appreciate the positives in my life, but I'm at the end of striving and it's odd. Anyone else feeling that way?

Not silly! I had exactly this thought when I was in a funk in my twenties and it started me off horse riding again, and then again in my late 30s when I didn't fancy the prospect of injury I started volunteering at a stables (also a charity).

I started cold water swimming too, that gives me the kick of the outdoors and it's fun to find different places to go.

Also strength training has changed my life, the same as everyone else who starts it!

lots of great advice here - what i notice is
that pleasure of any kind doesn‘t happen any more ( i’m 50) so i have to make sure i make time and space to experience it

I second this. Finding joy is so difficult in the midst of parenting, but it's so good for you.

I wonder if pleasure is just a different thing as you get older and you have already ticked off the aims you had as a young person: marriage, children, career etc. Instead of busily striving towards something, older people are often more content to just be, less than a rush and happier to watch the world go by. I don’t mean lazy or incapable of doing things for themselves, but just more content and more comfortable in their own skin. I suppose it’s just a shift in mindset.

How old are the dc?

I agree with PP it sounds like depression. Please see your GP. 💐

Following as I feel this at 55. Done marriage, lots of travel,
house, kids now teens, job - don’t want to climb the ladder anymore so I decided to tick a big exercise challenge off my bucket list that I’ve wanted to do for years and tbh now I’ve done it I feel worse than I did before as I’m now completely at a loss what to do next.

Maybe we need to work on contentment for small
things? I prob need a small does of ADs and strength training would help too. I have signed up to an Extreme Day trip group so will hopefully go along to that one day - lots of women I don’t know in their 40s/50s - looking for adventure like me.

Expressing my solidarity with you and the poster of this thread 🥰

You may need some creativity in your life op.

Grow, sew, knit, draw, paint, bake, write, something?

Or learn something new? Oil painting? An instrument?

Build a niche collection or breed an animal which leads you to new places, experiences and people?

Join a choir?

Too low in energy to try? Check out your sleep, diet and exercise regime and check with gp if you have low ferritin, vitamin D, B12, and that your thyroid is functioning ok.

If all ok physically, it helps to fake it until you make it. Go through the motions without thinking too deeply about why. Build yourself a little scaffolding in the form of a routine with rewards at the end of each day.

Journaling is good too! Every evening write down one thing we are grateful for, one thing that went well that day, and a small realistic goal for the next day.

Also, I think it is a very normal and rational response to feel low when you have less ahead of you than has already gone. A certain acceptance or rationality descends and we have to accept that we are in fact not the person who became an Olympic athlete or climbed Everest. We are just fairly ordinary. I am speaking generally of course op, we are all unique in our own way!

You may be depressed and need ADs but depression often comes when you have outgrown the life you are living so in fact this period of heaviness may turn out to be a sort of “pupation period” which precipitates a radical change, and we often have to wade through the deep mud to get to the higher pleasant land again.

Good luck 💐

We are born, we live and then we die. THats it really.