This is the point where this old nerd with ADHD, discovered his irrelevance…

To be honest, it completely snuck up on me, right?! Its a story old as time, the 40yo midlife crisis… Its a fun comedy to laugh at, the hilarity and silliness of the person trying to be younger than they are. Dont they understand how it works? Once you get a certain age, you pass the torch willingly, or unwillingly, but pass it you will, to the younger generation. Then you go softly, silently, into that sweet DAD BOD…

So, how does the midlife crisis mind combat this you ask? Well, in many ways. Maybe, it went by way of getting that classic car (convertible of course), that motorcycle that immediately takes 15 years off your age, maybe got that gym membership and kill yourself for a month before giving up, and so on… Its the 40yo death gasp, desperately grasping to the youth they once knew.

Which brings us to the fall… Once all these things have failed to fill the void long term (1 month), now what. THAT SHOULD HAVE WORKED! Now what are you supposed to do with a whole wardrobe of t-shirts with campy memes, skinny jeans made for gen z sporting junk the size of marbles, and a whole litany of work out and athletic clothes.

This will be my first journal entry as my attempt to spring clean my mind a bit.

My story is no different from many others in the fact that my realization of mortality came down like a hailstorm all at one time, specifically one day, during my morning constitutional. I have my time to think, and for some reason I hit the slippery slope of spinning through my life real quick in my head. The things Ive done, the things I want to do, the things I am currently doing, what brings me joy, what brings me sadness, how do I feel about myself, how do I feel about my world, what means the most to me, who means the most to me, do I have stress (absolutely), what is the catalyst of the stress, so on and so on….

While most of these questions were easy to answer, some were not. Some created more questions which kept my head spinning. It doesnt help that I cant calm my mind once it starts down an endless path, and believe me, this is an endless path. I came to this realization a couple years after the normal crisis age, but came to it I did…

I am no different from many others, and went drastic… During the time I turned 40 a couple years back, my wife and I started fostering. It has been the greatest and most miserable experience in my entire life at the same time. I wont go into detail here, I could write for days about it, but thats not what this is about. We had no kids, and this was the perfect journey for me especially as I was also adopted. Cutting to the chase, we have adopted 2 of the most awesome kids to ever exist. Though they may be the eye of the hurricane, wadding through the storm is the perfect chaos before the skies clear to the sunshine.

I guess this is when it happened for me… I looked down one day, realized my dad bod was completely in order and strong. For the first time since I was young, I got pissed about it. In true ADHD fashion, I went full bore on fixing it. I blasted head long into the fitness midlife crisis strategy. Gym membership, crash diet, changing habits, and so on. In 8 months I lost 70ish lbs. Sweet right! I dumped all my old man clothes, went and got new digs, was focused on being more active, it was all good things. Then I started to look for the sustainability. At this point, I was doing it all alone, thats what happens when I get something in my mind, I see the problem, I fix the problem. So to sustain, I look over at working out. I talk to some friends, see if they want to go, and it was generally a resounding “Man, I just dont have the time”. Which really means, “If I dont sit in this lazyboy, no one els will”… So I went to work out a bit by myself, kinda boring, but all good. I look over at a small group of guys taking over the entire weight lifting area, they clearly packed a lunch, and maybe dinner. Protein bars, puke green drinks, and testosterone shots. I took a quick video of them, here you go:

As they were creeping out everyone that wasn’t them, I decided that wasn’t for me, since it serves no purpose whatsoever, and its just creepy. Sorry, you do you, but dang.

So, I love basketball, and sports in general, lets do that! The hang up is that the closest anyone I know gets to “doing the sports”, is NBA Live and Madden… Okay, Ill head to the gym again… One court is full of a group of tweens and teens that dont want to play, just want to take up the entire court sitting and screwing with their phones. The other court is a pick up game of 5 on 5! Perfect, maybe if someone wants a break, I can step in and play.

So I watch for a bit, and one of them ask if I want to go in for him. Yes Sir! I quickly find that its basically a game of 1 on 1, the “1” on my team apparently felt the nagging urge to keep reminding everyone, he would have gone pro if ___________… Fill in the blank. After the 3rd time hearing this and his 4th missed shot, I let everyone know that I too would have gone pro if I had any talent. To which everyone laughed at his expense.

Needless to say, he was butt hurt, and that game ended with a loss, as well as my suffrage for fools. But, a couple of them invited me to join the league. That sounds good, what does that entail? Well, $50 a month, 3 practices a week, and a game or games every Saturday… Well, yeah! Ill think about it, and I did. The entire amount of time it took me to turn around… I decided against, because its insane and I have a life…

Where did everyone go from when I was a kid? We would just get together, head down to the local court and play some ball for a while, then move on about our day. No leagues, no payments, no practices, just have a little fun and get the heart pumping… Getting old really setting in now… Problem is, Im not ready to cash it in yet and just wait for impending death…

Then the fall, and dang, pizza is just freakin good… I gained about 20lbs back, not a big deal, but since I have exhausted my resources on finding activity for an old man, I guess that was to be expected… If I want to fight this old but not dead factor, I’m going to have to get creative. With most of what I do being a sitting activity, I have to find ways to get moving and enjoy it, because a treadmill is useless running to nowhere for nothing.

I think we are going to make some slight changes, instead of the burn it all to the ground and start over theorem… I have been looking for new things to do with the kids and picked up VR. Its actually quite enjoyable and accidentally noticed how it really gets your heartrate up and its fun. Its one of many fun things to do with my kids as well as the outdoors activities, but can be turned on and turned off with no schedule. Much more active than the MTG and D&D life, not that there is anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t create anything active whatsoever. Since my embarrassment tolerance is the highest its ever been! Here’s to new experiences for an old nerd….

If anyone’s into a pick up game, I’m in….