So Sallie Says

Why 34 is the new midlife crisis

I think my mid-life crisis is coming early because lately I’ve been flirting with the idea of a swift, drastic, deliciously impulsive Life Change. You know: total career shift, moving my family to Vermont, getting really into expensive camping set-ups. That sort of thing.

And I’ll be honest, I don’t really think “crisis” is the right word here. Maybe a “lifestyle pivot,” and if you ask me, 34 is the perfect time to completely and abruptly change directions. At this point, I’ve been living this version of my adult life for over a decade. I still have more than half of my working years to build an entirely new career. My kids are young enough that there’s barely anything to uproot, educationally or socially. And social media is convincing me that family camping trips in a tricked-out Mercedes Sprinter are both attainable and attractive.

But here’s what I’ve realized: the restlessness isn’t about hating where I am. I do genuinely love my life, and I would be an idiot to not feel an immense amount of gratitude. I’ve mostly figured out how to be competent at my life. I know which sippy cups don’t leak, how to do well at work, and how to maintain relationships that matter.

But when there’s less friction it starts to feel a little like quicksand. So yeah, I’m daydreaming about a life where I have a Scandinavian-style cabin, never have to see a Sharepoint folder again, and have picked up a totally useless and fulfilling hobby like building miniatures. It’s definitely a cope, but the thing about elaborate escape fantasies is they’re usually trying to tell you something.

The truth is, I do want to move to Vermont, but what I want more is what moving to Vermont represents: permission to rebuild my life around things which matter to me, and now just feels like the right time because the restlessness is setting in (and the leaves are changing, and I just got an L.L.Bean catalog in the mail, and Taylor Swift just released a new album — all signs of fall). But this is my brain just wrapping a real problem in an aesthetically pleasing package and calling it a life plan.

So now I’m actively trying to convince remind myself that change doesn’t have to be dramatic to be meaningful. Sometimes it looks like a complete career pivot and a move across the country. Sometimes it looks like changing your longtime email signature (which I just did, because who even am I anymore?). Sometimes it’s somewhere in the middle.

This is, honestly, why I started writing. Not because I think I’m going to become a famous author or even because I’m under any illusion that anyone other than my dad is reading this. But it’s mine, it’s an escape, and most importantly no one is going to schedule a meeting to discuss the quarterly objectives for this blog. (Thank God.) Writing reminds me I’m still a person who can do things just because I want to, and that is a surprisingly easy thing to forget when you’re just grinding through life.

So no, I probably won’t move to Vermont, buy a hundred acres, and rescue horses. Because what I’m learning is that this isn’t really about needing a different life—it’s about recognizing the gap between a well-functioning life and an authentic one. And closing the gap doesn’t require grand gestures, just intentional reclamation of the parts of yourself that get buried under productivity and responsibility and jadedness.

So I’m going to keep writing, keep waiting for an affordable New England horse farm to come on the market, and keep trying not to feel like an impostor when I sign my emails with “Best” instead of “Thanks.” And if this turns into a van life account, then we can officially call it a crisis.