A millennial’s midlife crisis is to have one

Ah, the millennial midlife crisis. Few things trigger an existential spiral quite like realising that you’re halfway to retirement age with no retirement plan, a tenuous grip on your mental health and a diet that consists mostly of iced coffee and anxiety.

Unlike the reckless optimism of your 20s, you can now see the end of the road, or at least the rising cost of petrol and school fees on the road ahead, and that brush with reality causes some strange behaviours.

We millennials don’t have the money for a traditional midlife crisis. No sports cars. No impractical holidays with boy toys and mistresses. No second homes. No expensive hobbies like horses. Instead, our crises manifest in less obvious ways than our Gen-X ancestors but they’re just as cringeworthy. Whether it’s desperately clinging to your youth through slang you barely understand or making impulsive career pivots into passion projects that don’t pay, the signs are there for everyone to see.

In keeping with tradition, the latest version of the midlife crisis is just as performative and just as tragic: doomed attempts at self-optimisation. To avoid falling into this trap, please stop doing the following:

Frantic wellness overhauls

It starts with one yoga class and suddenly you’re waking up at 4am to journal, meditating for enlightenment (but mostly Instagram stories), and micro-dosing mushrooms to “unlock your true self”. Don’t get me wrong, wellness is great and psychedelics are better but there’s a fine line between self-care and a desperate attempt to outrun existential dread through a Shaman from Camps Bay.

And let’s talk about the cold plunges. Somewhere along the line, millennials decided that the best way to prove mental resilience was to willingly dunk themselves into freezing water while grinning through the pain. If you have to do weekly ice baths just to tolerate being alive, perhaps the problem isn’t your nervous system but your entire life.

Becoming an influencer

Your corporate job is soul-crushing, I get it. But you’re not going to become Mr Beast. In fact, quitting everything to become a “freelance creative entrepreneur” is just going to make your therapy bill skyrocket when you realise that the 17 people who’ve been liking your content are bots. Yes, yes, stories abound of people who threw caution to the wind and took a leap of faith. Could that be you? Maybe, but if you look down you’ll see a lot of bodies that didn’t make the jump. Put it this way, for every JK Rowling, there are amillion of those annoying friends who corner you at parties and yap about the difficulties of world building.

Even worse are those who pivot into some form of life coaching. These are the people who read The 4-Hour Workweek once and now believe they have the secrets to success. They make vague, motivational LinkedIn posts that say things like, “Your only limit is yourself”. Don’t listen to them. They either have crippling debt or wealthy spouses.

Spending wild amounts of money on adult toys

There is no shame in getting older, but there is incredible shame in trying to dress like a TikTok influencer when you have lower back pain.

Somewhere between realising that dating is exhausting and acknowledging that relationships require work, a lot of millennials have taken what disposable income they have and started funnelling it into amassing a collection of adult toys that cost as much as home appliances. Yes, that includes the men. These are the people who say things like, “This is the Rolls Royce of vibrators”, or who own machinery that looks like it belongs in a Nasa lab. If you’ve ever had to charge a device before a romantic evening alone, it might be time to assess some life choices.

And let’s be honest: no matter how advanced technology gets, nothing will replace the thrill of another person liking your meme reply.

Trying to be a ‘cool’ older person

At some point, every millennial in their 30s or 40s must accept a naked truth: we are no longer the youth. I know, it’s a brutal thing to admit to yourself. If you have to Google what “rizz” means, you probably shouldn’t be using it. Scratch that, you shouldn’t be using “rizz” whether you have to Google it or not.

There is no shame in getting older, but there is incredible shame in trying to dress like a TikTok influencer when you have lower back pain. So what’s the best way to navigate your millennial midlife crisis? Don’t. Embrace the inexorable pull of that light people keep talking about. In fact, to quote my grandfather, “Dash it all”.

Between VAT increases, global tariff wars, the looming threat of nuclear extinction and the carnivore diet, we’re probably not going to make it to retirement anyway. So we may as well have fun being ourselves along the way.