The Murky Middle

On embracing middle age, changing identities, and finally stopping the search.

We don’t walk barefoot here. I have animals… and fire ants. Photo by me

I feel like most stories we see online about people changing their lives in a dramatic fashion always focus on “selling everything to travel,” and yes, I did that. Yet I’m not sure we ever talk about what happens after we sell everything and travel. Since that’s the dramatic tagline that gets clicks, we spend far more time talking about the beginning than the middle.

As a society, we are obsessed with starting and finishing, but what about the murky middle?

Since I am officially middle-aged now, I wanted to talk about middles. The dirty, muddy life of stopping. Changing, but not with the dramatic flair of changing my life. Instead, I stopped.

I stopped trying to change my life and instead decided to start living it.

If you were to ask the old me, “So you weren’t living your life when you were traveling?” Well, of course I was living, but I also felt like I was searching. Looking back now, I realize I was hell-bent on finding “it.” What is “it?” I still don’t know, but I think I found it. I know, it doesn’t make sense to anyone but me.

Maybe that’s because we tend to think of change as something dramatic. We imagine quitting our jobs, selling everything, or moving across the world. But sometimes the biggest changes are much quieter.

When I decided to do the not-so-dramatic thing of settling down and stopping traveling, I felt it was a change in my life, but a small one. Nothing over the top. I just decided one day I was done. Yet I felt that I should keep going because I had made such a dramatic affair of it all. I almost felt guilty.

It had become my whole identity. I started to despise moving, flying, another country, another hostel, another hotel, and constantly meeting new people. The thing that had once made me feel alive had slowly become routine.

In 2021, I started searching for a home. However, if I am honest with myself, I didn’t actually think I would pull the trigger and do it. I wanted a home base while continuing to travel. I imagined a small homestead where I could leave everything, get house sitters when I was away, and keep my life essentially the same, just with roots when I needed them.

Because travel and moving had become my identity, I was also afraid of changing that identity.

Maybe that’s another thing we don’t talk about. The first dramatic change is exciting. The second one, the quieter one, can be much harder.

However, I have found this middle chapter the most rewarding because it’s real. It’s not dramatic. It’s quiet, and it’s fulfilling.

I also do not mind being middle-aged, essentially jobless, and living in a country that is not my own. I feel as if I could slip into oblivion unnoticed, and I love it. Feeling a bit invisible, without any expectations.

When you are younger, people ask when you are settling down, getting married, and having kids. Then one day you realize you’ve passed that stage of life. If we’re lucky, we all become middle-aged. Yet many of us become invisible, and that can be devastating to the ego.

Except I don’t feel that way.

I barely leave my house. I love staying home, grounding myself, hanging out with the animals, gardening, writing, editing, and doing things I love. I listen to countless audiobooks, have a million ideas, and am enjoying a life with very few expectations or pressure.

Maybe being in the middle isn’t so bad after all.

Maybe that’s why none of us talk about it. It’s a time for reflecting on what we actually want, what we treasure, and how we want to spend whatever comes next.

I see so much online about fighting aging. Botox, fillers, endless advice on looking younger. Maybe because I am okay with getting older, I have a hard time relating to it. Or maybe it’s because I have spent so much of my life doing exactly what I wanted that I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

So many people seem desperate to hold on to youth that they never get to enjoy where they are now — in the middle.

Stories about starting over in middle age are still popular when you can find the dramatic ones. Mine isn’t dramatic.

I live in the mountains on a small farm. I am trying to pretend it’s the 1800s. I get irrationally annoyed when my bank wants to send me a verification text. I have to keep my U.S. phone number just for that reason. I have no desire to move forward technologically. I like my neighborhood because most of my neighbors don’t even have internet. I wish I didn’t rely on it so heavily myself, and I’ve been intentionally spending less and less time online.

Maybe my version of starting over is really a disappearing act.

Not disappearing from life.

Disappearing from the pressure to keep searching.

To keep reinventing myself.

To keep performing.

I don’t know if I’m at the end of my story.

I suspect I’m still somewhere in the middle.

And for the first time in a very long time, I’m exactly where I want to be.

Baking. Photo by me.

XOXO

S.