People in their late 30's and beyond: When you reached your late 30's or 40's, did you start re-evaluating your life, i.e. happiness, career, relationship, housing situation?

Fuck, I’m 26 and I’m re-evaluating my happiness, career and housing situation.

It’s always good to reevaluate. It was my mid 30s for me.

Yes (and 39).

Baby pangs have been coming full force. I need to get on that before my eggs shrivel up to the size of raisins. I want to settle down in a home and get married to my partner, as well. I am changing careers (starting this Fall) and am hoping to retire at 65. I need to save more. Student loans are finally paid off (25 G’s).

Ahhh….

I’m happy as a pig in shit, though.

I think everyone takes time to reflect at certain points in their lives. Sometimes we are just too busy to do so, so it’s not done as often as we should. Of course at about 40 your do start to feel time is getting shorter and you may realize there are some dreams that may not have been fulfilled. At this point we re-evaluate those dreams and decide if they are worth persuing or if they simply aren’t valid to you any more, or even if they are possible.

You bet. Continuous or, at least, occasional reassessment is good. Set some long-term goals and work toward them, with critical evaluation and adjustment along the way. I will be 60 in a few months, and my current life certainly has many touchpoints with my life in prior decades, yet each decade has brought changes: some profound, some subtle; some planned, some reactionary, some accidental; some good, some bad. There’s always a place for reflection and change.

Yes, more than once I have taken stock of my life and made major changes.

When I was younger, I use to periodically ( I’d say about once every 5–10 years or so ) go on a backpacking trip, just me and my old dog. We’d go up into the Smokey Mountains in North Carolina, or some other nearby wild area, and just walk and think and meditate. Never once did I not find an answer to whatever was bothering me, and many times I changed my life radically based on what I learned there. I thought of it as doing for my mind the same thing I do for my body when I bathe it. : ))

That lil dog knew me better than almost anyone in my life. : )

If I was a nail you’re just the hammer that hit me right on the head this very minute! The answer is a huge Yes and even as I type this, I’m evaluating and evaluating and evalua…

I’m 43. Yey.

I’ve done it several times since my… let’s see… late 20s. I’ve changed careers (twice, except the second change was back to the first industry – and first company – that I had left ten years earlier), made several moves (Michigan to California to Connecticut being the most recent series), and have been separated for just over ten years now.

Things ain’t perfect, but they’re okay. And I know with absolute certainty that I can change when I need to or want to.

Yes. My partner and I are starting to talk about whether we want children or not. The clock is ticking and we need to make a decision in the next few years. We finally got our own (first) house two years ago. I am hoping to start a career in the next year or two (which makes the child rearing idea a bit more difficult).

I often look at the paths which my life has taken (some by choice and others not so much).
There are many things I wanted to do with my life which I have not yet been able to. Some of these things, it seems too late for.

Re-evaluating is quite continuous for me.

I’m perpetually stuck in this, but one thing that came to me recently was asking what do I want to do with my time instead of what do I want to do with my life. For me, something clicked with that and the idea that your life pretty much does itself without your help.

I went through this a bit at 50— my marriage fell apart, the company where I’d worked for 25 years got taken over and I was laid off.

I have been doing that a lot lately….but late 40’s is when things really ramped up in the what the hell was I thinking category! Change is good and I got some plans for the near future!

Doing this right now (on my way to quitting job, moving house), and I’m in my early 30s.
Is it a biological restlessness? I wonder.

No because long term plans are always changed by circumstances .

Today I can be rich and the next day I can loose it all while I can be poor today and get something of worth tomorrow .

The same goes for happiness and carers .

I was in an abusive relationship for many decades. I finally realized that it was slowly killing me, I was enabling (allowing him to continue to treat me that way), and I was modeling that behavior for my children as well. I started this process at 43. It took a number of years, but we got it all sorted out, and I’m still married to him.

I feel like every 7–10 years I go through this phase. I’m 37 and planning on going back to school in 2012. I see this happening to many people my age. It could just be about the economy at this point. I think gen x is realizing that we are indeed getting older and need to think about the future.

I’ve been the type that re-evaluates my future all the time. I was forced to do it early on, and it simply became part of my life-style.

Sure. I started that when I got laid off from my corporate media job at 35.

But life’s evolution and change, so I hope this period has been a good thing for you, @jca.

I think Ferris Bueller said it best: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Every day is a re-evaluation, a fresh start. My overlying theory is:
“We’re here for a good time, not a long time, so have a good time, the sun can’t shine every day!” (Trooper).

Yes. I did this about 38 (I’m 44 now). Now I reevaluate every few months to see if I’m on track for the things I want or to acknowledge if those things I thought I wanted have changed and then comes the scary and sometimes heartbreaking task of taking action to move on.

^^ pinch a loaf!

I gave up on the concept of love when I was 45. Romance never seemed to work itself out for me.