I’m 40, Creative and Wondering What the Hell I’m Doing with My Life

40, F*cked and Figuring It All Out…

Well, here we are. Forty years old and completely and utterly confused about what the F*CK I'm doing with my life.

Lovely.

I turned 40 last December, and ever since, I feel like someone has picked up my life, given it a bloody good shake and thrown the pieces everywhere. The worst part? It's mostly self-inflicted. Late last year, my hubby Clint and I made the rather spontaneous decision to pack up our lives in Brisbane and move to the Sunshine Coast. Did we have a plan? Not really. Did we have jobs lined up? Nope. Did we have an unreasonable amount of optimism and a shared love of adventure? Absolutely! What could possibly go wrong?

I took long service leave from my teaching job of eight years, Clint packed up his successful building business, and off we went. New chapter, new beginnings, sunshine, beaches, the whole bloody dream. I genuinely thought it was going to be easy. Fun, even!

Spoiler alert: It was not.

Now, Clint and I are no strangers to moving. We've moved around a LOT over the years, but Brisbane was different. We'd been there for eight years, the longest we'd ever stayed put. We'd built a life there. A really lovely one, actually. And suddenly, I missed everything. My morning waterfront walks with my son and our two fur babies. I walked every single morning, rain, hail or shine. It was practically part of my personality. I never missed a day. Unless I was severely hungover, obviously. I'm dedicated, not insane. I missed my workmates. I missed teaching. I missed the city, the buzz, the opportunities and being able to pop into Brisbane for a fun event without making an entire bloody expedition out of it. I missed our old life.

And I kept thinking, what the F*CK have we done?!

There were tears. Regrets. A LOT of second-guessing. We even talked about packing everything up and moving back. Imagine that. Uprooting your entire life only to turn around and go, "Actually, no thanks." But slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, things have started to change. The Sunshine Coast is beginning to feel like home. I'm finding my feet, discovering new places and starting to appreciate this new chapter. It's just taken a little longer than my wildly optimistic brain anticipated.

And then came the career crisis.

Because apparently moving cities and turning 40 wasn't enough excitement for one year.

My long service leave was running out, and there was one tiny little detail I needed to sort out.

Money.

You know, that annoying thing you need to pay the mortgage, buy groceries and occasionally purchase something completely unnecessary from Gorman. I needed a job. Preferably one that paid actual money.

So I started applying.

And applying.

And applying.

I applied for jobs I genuinely knew I'd be brilliant at. Jobs that matched my experience, my skills and my qualifications. And guess what?

NOT. ONE. BLOODY. INTERVIEW.

Seriously?!

I've been a teacher for almost 20 years. I've built and run my own successful children's art studio. I've studied interior decoration. I've worked in careers education, managed projects, worked with clients, taught hundreds of kids and somehow managed to keep a small human alive for three years. Surely SOMEONE would want to employ me? Apparently not. My ego took an absolute beating.

I started questioning everything. Was my résumé terrible? Was I too experienced? Not experienced enough? Too old? Too creative? Had I somehow become completely unemployable overnight? I went from feeling like a capable, accomplished woman to wondering whether I had any bloody idea what I was doing. And honestly, it was devastating.

I've always worked. I've always contributed financially. I've always had something going on. So suddenly not earning money, not knowing what I was doing next and feeling like I wasn't contributing enough to my family was really, really hard. Cue the existential crisis.

Enter: My brief career as a kitchen designer.

Eventually, I landed a job with a very well-known Australian kitchen company.

Woohoo! Even better, I was told there was the potential to earn serious money. Like, DOUBLE my teaching salary kind of money. Um, excuse me? Where do I sign up? I was already mentally spending my imaginary commissions on holidays, fabulous homewares and a new car (my 14 year old Hyundai is seriously on the fritz). Unfortunately, the reality was a little less glamorous. The role turned out to be heavily sales-driven, high-pressure and rather micromanaged. The leads weren't nearly as wonderful as we'd been led to believe, and I found myself working late nights, weekends and spending precious time away from my family. But I gave it a red-hot go. Four months, in fact. And after working my absolute butt off, I was averaging around $600 a week.

SIX. HUNDRED. DOLLARS.

For all that effort, pressure and time away from my family. Not quite the financial freedom I'd envisioned while mentally furnishing my dream home. So I quit.

Again, probably not my finest financial decision, but I knew it wasn't the right fit for me. I decided to return to casual relief teaching while I figured out my next move. Which brings us to today.

So... what now?

I'm currently sitting in a café, coffee in hand, wondering what on earth I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

Casual teaching? Find another full-time job? Start another business? Reinvent myself entirely? Become one of those women who makes a fortune selling something obscure on the internet? At this point, I'm open to suggestions. I've probably come up with approximately 500 business ideas in the last few months. And I'm not even exaggerating. One minute I'm going to relaunch my art studio. The next I'm opening a homewares shop. Then I'm building an online creative business. Then I'm going Oh, wait. Here we are. My brain is essentially a Pinterest board with absolutely no business plan.

But underneath all the ideas, the overthinking and the occasional emotional meltdown, there's something that keeps nagging at me.

Surely there must be a way to make a living doing something I genuinely love?

Something creative. Something meaningful. Something that uses all these random skills and experiences I've collected over the years. Because I know I'm capable. I know I have a lot to offer. But when you can't even land an interview for a Visual Arts teaching job, something you've been qualified to do for nearly two decades, you do start to wonder. Is it me? Is it my résumé? Am I a jack of all trades and master of none?

Or have I spent so many years doing different things that I no longer fit neatly into anyone's little employment box? Maybe that's the problem. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the reason I should be creating something of my own. I don't bloody know. And that's kind of the point. For the first time in a long time, I genuinely don't know what comes next. I'm 40, I've got a mortgage, a husband, a three-year-old, a head full of ideas and a rather urgent need to earn some money. Not exactly the glamorous midlife reinvention I had in mind.

But perhaps this blog can be somewhere I share the messy middle. The ideas, the adventures, the failures, the creative projects, the ridiculous decisions and hopefully a few wins along the way. No perfectly curated success story. No pretending I've got it all figured out. Just me, having a crack at life and occasionally wondering whether I've completely lost the plot.

Welcome to my midlife crisis. At least it's cheaper than a Porsche. 😂