Mid-life Crisis or Mid-life Rebirth?

This middle adulthood moment that I’m having has got me extra full of reflections in 2024, and somehow they do not possess the “crisis” quality that many of our cultural narratives suggest will be the case in mid-life. I joked with friends about how approaching 50 years (I’m not quite there yet…) and yet still embracing this dog-eat-dog world with a “joie de vivre” seems mostly miraculous. In fact, last year, I went back to school, y’all, and being in a second graduate school program at my age