Navigating a Looming Midlife Crisis

I’m 36 years old, which feels simultaneously much too young and alarmingly appropriate for the phrase looming midlife crisis.

To be clear, I haven’t purchased a convertible.

There have been no dramatic bangs, questionable tattoos, or sudden decisions to join a cult. Instead, my version appears to involve college catalogs, environmental science textbooks, career searches, and the increasingly persistent question: What am I going to do with the rest of my working life?

Because here is the thing: I love being a massage therapist.

I love my work. I love being able to consistently and effectively help people feel better in their bodies. After sixteen years, I know what I'm doing, and there is enormous satisfaction in being good at something that genuinely helps people. I would love to continue practicing massage until I have considerably more wrinkles and saggy skin than I do now.

But full-time massage therapy is physical work. My body will not always be able to do what it does now. Sixteen years is already a pretty good run in a physically demanding profession, and lately I've felt an increasingly intense urge to figure out what comes next—not because I want to leave massage, but because I don't want to wait until my body makes that decision for me.

After coming this far in one career, the idea of starting all over in a new career felt daunting... until a dear friend asked me why I thought I needed to "start from scratch."

So, Maybe I’m Not Starting Over?

Following my friend's encouragement, I started reflecting:

• What have I learned from sixteen years of working professionally?

• What did I learn from building and running businesses?

• Managing people? Marketing? Customer service? Finances? Facilities?

• What did I learn from vermiculture, gardening, animal rescue, community education, making art, solving problems, building things, and all the strange little experiences that accumulate over an adult life?

• What am I actually good at?

And then came the considerably more uncomfortable question:

What do I really want to do?

Not "what seems easiest" or "what seems most practical," but what actually excites me? What work am I deeply interested in, and what inspires me? What kind of work would make me feel like I'm making a difference in the world and leaving something good behind?

I cannot tell you how many times I responded to an idea with:

"But that's not practical."

And she would ask:

"Why?"

Annoyingly, I usually didn't have an answer. The answer was fear. But fear of what? Failure? What does failure even look like at this point? Because I'm beginning to think that the bigger failure would be reaching another decade of my life and realizing I never tried.

Looking Backward for Clues

Once I stopped asking what seemed practical and started asking what actually mattered to me, something interesting happened: I started remembering all the earlier versions of myself.

• Three-year-old Hannah couldn't wait to wake up and walk the beach with Mom on misty Washington mornings. I learned my shapes because she drew them in the wet sand with a piece of driftwood.

• Five-year-old Hannah waded into the bay, searching through eelgrass and seaweed for tiny creatures. I flipped rocks looking for crabs, inspected dock pilings for the biggest barnacles, and on especially low tides searched for the brilliantly colored sunflower sea stars native to Puget Sound.

• Six-year-old Hannah visited family in the Bay Area for the first time and stared at the California landscape with absolute wonder. That particular fascination never went away.

• Seven-year-old Hannah went fishing with Dad on the little lakes around North Kitsap County and was just as interested in everything living around the lake as whatever might be on the fishing line.

• Tween Hannah thought being a park ranger sounded amazing after she was introduced to Hurricane Ridge in Sequim, WA and Mt. Rainier National Park in the Cascade mountain range.

• Young teenage Hannah wanted to go to college in California - UC Davis at first, then Stanford. Teenage Hannah wanted to become a marine biologist. Later, teenage Hannah applied to Stanford to pursue Biology...and got accepted. Then life threw some fairly significant curveballs during my senior year of high school, and staying close to home felt like the safest thing to do. So I did.

• Young adult Hannah would walk down to the public docks and boat slips by the ferry in Kingston, WA. Sometimes I would stick my feet in the water and watch all the little fish swimming around. More often, I would lie on my stomach and look over the edge of the floating docks, studying the sea life growing on the undersides and pilings. I wanted to know what lived there, how it got there, and what the underwater world looked like just beneath the surface. I would always reflect on how "I used to want to be a marine biologist".

• In my early to mid-twenties, I began exploring the Olympic Mountains more deeply. Hurricane Ridge had been my first introduction, but I soon ventured farther into places like Dosiwallups, the Duckabush and Elwha River valleys, Spider Lake, Sol Duc River, Olympic Hot Springs, the Hoh Rain Forest, and the moody Pacific coast. I spent time at the top of a little hill on Penny Creek Road in Quilcene, Washington, too. It was usually overcast, so most of the views consisted of increasingly taller mountains to the west, appearing and disappearing through passing clouds and pillars of mist. On clear days, if I looked southeast, I could see Mount Rainier. Everywhere I went, the environment felt amazing and magical, like I was returning home. I wanted to be there all the time because it was where I felt most at peace. I'd think how amazing it would have been to pursue a career that let me spend time in these beautiful places and regretting not going to college. 

Some Regrets Stick

I've built a wonderful life since then. Massage therapy became a career I am genuinely proud of. I became an entrepreneur. I built businesses. I helped people. I made art. I learned how to grow things and build things and manage things. I became involved in my community. I somehow became the person people call when there is a homeless cat situation.

None of that was wasted time.

But not going to college has haunted me. So has never giving myself the chance to find out what might have happened if I'd followed some of those earlier dreams. Some regrets fade into funny stories, while others stick around and become little sore spots you try not to "pick the scab" on. 

I had been the "gifted kid." Then life happened. I burned out. I found my footing again in my twenties, accomplished a lot, burned out again, and entered my early thirties feeling more tired and adrift than I expected.

The last several years haven't exactly been quiet, either.

Yay, Florida!

No, COVID.

Yay, back to work!

No, hurricane.

Yay, we bought a house!

Wait. Why are there so many homeless cats? Yay, I helped some cats!

Oh no. I am exhausted and need help.

At some point, underneath all the responsibilities and emergencies and things that needed me, a quieter question started getting louder:

What does Hannah need?

I Think I Know...

• I need to stop treating the things that deeply interest me as impractical simply because pursuing them would require courage.

• I need to give myself permission to become a beginner again.

• I need a career that can eventually provide greater physical sustainability than full-time massage therapy.

• I need that career to involve something I actually care about, where I can make positive change and inspire others. 

Increasingly, everything keeps pointing toward Environmental Studies: ecology, conservation, watersheds, regenerative land stewardship, geology, GIS, environmental policy, and the complicated relationship between people and the landscapes we depend upon.

The funny thing is that when I originally chose massage therapy, one of its great appeals was flexibility. Someday, I thought, I could use that flexibility to go back to school. Apparently, sixteen years later, "someday" has arrived. 

I'm getting a particular kick out of the possibility that somewhere in my future college transcript may sit an AP Literature credit earned by teenage Hannah and a Sociology 101 credit from Olympic College, taken when I was first trying to figure out what I wanted to do after high school.

She didn't know where she was going yet.

But maybe she left me a couple credits for when I got there.

Locking In

So perhaps this looming midlife crisis isn't really about becoming someone new. Maybe it's about finally listening to all the versions of myself who were trying to tell me something.

I'm not ashamed of the choices I've made. In face, I am quite proud of my accomplishments. But I know I can do more, especially more than my younger self. At 36, I have experience she didn't have. I have resilience she hadn't built yet. I have professional skills, perspective, and a much better understanding of who I am.

Additionally, massage doesn't have to be the thing I eventually leave behind. It can do exactly what I once hoped it would do. Massage can give me the flexibility to go back to school while continuing work I love for as long as my body allows.

I'm not starting from scratch. I'm starting with sixteen years of experience—and a 36 years of clues pointing me in the direction I am meant to go. So as my midlife crisis appears on the horizon, I'm looking back at all the Hannahs who somehow led me here. I think I owe it to them to find out what happens if, this time, I follow through.