You’ve arrived. You’ve got that job that you yearned for. You’ve earned not only you bachelor’s - but a master’s, a doctorate, or even a professional degree. You live in a respectable neighborhood. You have real furniture. You can pay your credit card bill off most, if not every, month. You may have a life partner, or at least a steady date. A child or two may be on the horizon. And you are looking and thinking: Is THIS what it’s supposed to feel like? Is this all there is to adulthood? Another 40 or 50 years living like this?
Maybe you just need a vacation. You take off a week or two. You travel, it’s great.
Taking a break from the daily grind is healthy. Regardless of whether your preference is to be more active, or more slug-like, breaking away can help clear you mind and give you some perspective upon your everyday challenges. If you come back ready to implement positive changes to get you out of the rut – great. Otherwise, though, it’s the same.
A new hobby. That’s it. This requires some thought. You don’t really feel like doing anything when you get home from work at the end of the day except daze out on Netflix. Possibly you’ve ventured down this pathway before. Joined a book club. Taken up knitting. Took a cooking class. Started hiking, skiing or cycling. You were hot and heavy with it for a while and then…not so much. Maybe your heart wasn’t in it. Maybe you just need to figure out that one thing that is going to make all the difference.
Having other interests beyond work, family and relationships can help us tap into parts of ourselves that may be underutilized on the job or at home. It’s kind of like doing Soduko or the New York Times crossword puzzle in retirement. Sometimes, as a bonus, the interest might help you stay fit and healthy.
New Friends. Would that help? You realize a lot of your friends have gradually moved away. You may have left school and shared apartments together when you were new in town together. But slowly, friends have moved on. They got jobs elsewhere. They met someone who had a life somewhere else. The scratched the itch to move. But you stayed.
Social connections outside your relationship, family and work can help reduce the extent to which you rely upon your life partner to fulfill your emotional needs. But making new friends in adulthood can be a challenge. There are far less opportunities to socialize on a day to day basis. If you move your residence, join a new church, or start working out at a new gym, you may initially meet some new folks. If you have children, they brings into your life, by extension, a new group of potential friends. But following up on the opportunity – making that date for coffee, hosting a group for the Superbowl, serving as the leader for an event – takes time and energy. It requires an investment. And, unless we make extra effort to change old patterns, we bring ourselves – our middle school selves – to these adult exchanges. So, if you were not inclined to step up and run for class president back in school, you may be naturally inclined to stand back from being a leader in your community.
A new job, a new place, a new car, some new shoes – the list of potential external tweaks goes on. However, if the malaise is significant, none of these will ultimately “fix” that baseline level of blah. Sometimes, even after you have worked hard to get to a certain place in life, you find it’s actually not what you really want. It’s hard to ask the tough questions, to do the internal work necessary to find your best life. But that may be the only way you to get where you really want to go.