I can't be arsed!

[csd19]

BenEK9 said:

csd19 said:

I'm 43 and can sympathise with the OP, feel like I'm not quite right.

g3org3y said:

No partner or kids?

No goals or targets in life?

This question hit home a bit hard - no wife/gf, no kids, nothing I really want to do. I'm working through redecorating and renovating the house and although it's been good to see the changes and improvements I'm not getting a buzz from it. Or if I do it's very short lived. I still do bits and pieces on the cars but it's in a similar vein.

Maybe I need to book a holiday away this year, I certainly get enough time off work to make it happen.

Occasionally it really does feel like I'm just marking time until the day my heart stops, hopefully another 30 years to go...

Other peoples idea's of a successful life, wife, kids or achieving goals and targets are not a fix for everyone. Plenty of miserable people with all those.
To try to drag yourself out of any mild form depression by striving to reach societal goals, could make you feel worse as you fail to achieve them or they might not fix depression if you do.

Do little things everyday that make you feel good about yourself, try to be kind and useful in your environment, eat well and start a regular cardio exercise regime of some sort.
You should start to find your own way. Be it wife and kids, a life spent travelling the world, or whatever. But just start by looking after your body and mind.

Apologies Ben, I hadn't noticed your reply to the thread.

My post had been made at the start of my last trip offshore, and I really wasn't too great in the run up to mobilising. I'd had 5 weeks off over Dec/Jan and the bad weather didn't help one bit. Almost turned the car around on the drive to Aberdeen tbh.

But.

BUT.

Something clicked on that last trip, I don't know what it was or how to explain it but something changed. Maybe I'd finally gotten over my separation and divorce, I don't know. I'd had that married life, decent wife stuff but we drifted apart. Box ticked, next! But it did seem to be from one day to the next it was all just fine?

I'm eating a lot more healthily, especially at work (the food out here is really decent so it was difficult to go easy) and have been off chocolate and sweets / puddings since about 5th Jan. Chocolate is the offshore currency for getting stuff done and there's usually a few bars of Marabou kicking about at any one time, so this is a big step for me. I've got a sweet tooth so basically had to go cold turkey and it's worked so far.

My weight is coming down as well, dropped 8 pounds since mid Jan which is good considering my folks' 50th anniversary was in Feb and we had a big meal out and plenty of drinking. So I'm into the body and mind repair time of my life, mentally I feel better, physically as well and I'm going to push myself to keep this going with better activity once I'm home. It's now my time.

[Kermit power]

Nethybridge said:

Wait till retirement, it's much, much worse,

If you are unfullfilled, unmotivated and soporific at 37, just wait 30 years.

Hey, hope that helps.

Well, for you maybe. That doesn't necessarily mean the OP's experience won't be the complete opposite.

I had thought I might feel this in retirement until a spell of redundancy a while back completely reset my thinking.

I realises that any sense of lacking largely came from spending the lion's share of my waking hours doing a well paid job that I'm good at whilst not actually enjoying it most of the time, and then resenting anything in daily life that got in the way of using my precious weekend time for me. I'd also feel a growing sense of darkness any time I drove home from a holiday.

That period of redundancy gave me a vision of the future where I could do what I wanted. If it's sunny today, the dog and I will do a 15 mile walk with a nice pub lunch in the middle. If the weather's crap, no problem, I can crack on with decorating the spare room. Feeling a bit down in the dumps? No problem, let's just jump in the (yet to be acquired) camper van and head somewhere different for a few days at a cost of pennies and at the drop of a hat.

Even now I'm back working, that experience makes everything easier, as I now feel that what I have left of my career has a meaningful purpose in supporting my retirement.

To the OP - Certainly worth chatting to your GP about what support you can get to investigate your issue. It might be depression, it might be low testosterone but it could be any one of a plethora of other root causes to, so asking strangers on the Internet about it us right up there with people in cycling forums asking what saddle they should get as though atrangers know what it feels like to have their arse!