A Midlife Redefinition

A Mid Life Redefiniton

My kids said that I was having a midlife crisis.

“Dad bought a motorcycle! And a Porsche!”

I countered that it was more of a midlife … redefinition.

Among my friends, I was the first to have children. Since at the time I was neck deep in the “rave scene”, it had a chilling effect on my life of the party and better living through chemistry philosophy. My friends and I were responsible for all the warehouse dance parties and festivals that were beginning to sprout in the late 90s and early 2000’s - we were the DJs and promoters and graphic designers that grew the underground dance scene in central British Columbia.

When suddenly I discovered, to my shock, that I was going to be a father (I swear, I did understand how these things worked…), I knew immediately that I couldn’t be both a rave DJ and a good father simultaneously.

And without hesitation, I pulled out.

I can barely handle myself after I haven’t slept for a week, how am I going to deal with a screaming, shitting baby?

It is for this reason that my eldest was named Darwin: he was my personal evolution. I knew that I couldn’t go on like I had been - had, in fact, been looking for a way out for some time already.

I have never made any secret that I was deep down the rabbit hole of party drugs, to my children or even any potential employers.

When I was ready to quit, I simply stopped and then isolated myself from those of whom might try to draw me back. From my perspective it demonstrates my determination, that I can achieve anything I decide upon, and having that range of experience makes me a more rounded and perceptive individual.

Looking back, it is like a different life. Those days are remembered as though they are scenes from a film I saw once. My life today has hardly any semblance to who I had been back then.

That was twenty two years ago.

I traded in my long nights in dancing for long nights coddling babies. Time marched on and I had another and then another and then my wife and I split and one thing led to another and I ended up with sole custody of the kids and eventually she stopped even texting them and I raised those three on my own.

Three neurodivergent kids with abandonment issues, and one former raver trying to corral them.

I used to call them my swarm… each about 18 months apart, we would go into the grocery store and the three of them would swirl about at my feet like a cloud of tasmanian devils.

Basically, a walking condom commercial.

Being that they were all neurodivergent, there was hardly a week that went by where I didn’t have to attend some kind of all team meeting, or planning session, or therapist appointment. They weren’t bad kids they were just a handful and there was never a dull moment. Chaos ruled my life for many years and if I hadn’t such a well developed and dark sense of humor I might have slipped into madness at the levels of stress I existed in. I wouldn’t dare leave them alone, even for fifteen minutes just to run to the store to get milk. Everyone in the van we gotta go to the store.

Thankfully, the universe had provided me with an employer who was flexible and I had managed to carve out a niche with the company where I could work around the kids schedules and as long as my work was getting done, they didn’t care how I spent my time.

This is how this oldschool hacker kiddy and audio engineer ended up in Relationship Management for a office technology company for a decade and a half. The benefits were good - extended health, drug, gas card… but most importantly, for those years while I was juggling managing a house plus three special little dudes, had I been required to punch the clock, we might not have made it.

Or, if I had, then I wouldn’t have been able to have committed the time my kids needed to have ended up as the awesome young adults that they are.

We can only speculate.

So as first one and then another and then another graduated, it dawned upon me that I had more freedoms. I didn’t need to drive a minivan. I could ride a motorcycle as a mode of transit, or heck, even for fun in my “spare time”.

Game changer.

Sure, it probably also has something to do with the view on mortality you develop in your 40s. By the time you are in your mid 40s, you have already had a few friends and contemporaries die. You have seen your slightly older friends move into retirement and thought “holy shit that’s coming for me too.” You fall off your mountain bike and it costs you a whole season of riding instead of a weekend and a dozen beers. Everything is more complex.

What it isn’t, however, is a desperate attempt to cling to my youth.

I have actually loved growing older. I don’t dye my hair. I exercise, but it is because if I stop moving for too long then it hurts to start moving again, not because I am trying to impress the ladies. Where I am today is way, way better than where I was half my life ago, even if my joints are a little more stiff.