Mid-Life Crisis...Feminine Style

I've always been out-of-sync with my age. As a young child, I often preferred to be with adults over kids my age. I didn't like cartoons. I read a lot when it wasn't cool.

In high school I dated older boys and didn't participate in some of the coming-of-age rituals like prom.

In college, I was more focused on discovering my new love of the theatre and acting, and I avoided sororities, parties, and really letting loose. During a time when I could have been "playing the field", I had a long term relationship that lasted throughout most of my twenties.

After college, when my contemporaries were pursuing their careers and beginning their lives, I lived in Daytona Beach and discovered all night parties, drug experimentation, and short term flings.

When my friends were getting married and having babies, I was moving around the country and up the corporate ladder.

Finally, in my early-mid thirties, I began to get serious. I've lived in this area for about ten years, I purchased my first house, I launched my own business.

I've dated like a fiend, and have had more than my share of love affairs.

The last few years, I've begun to feel restless. I thought about moving again. I resisted because it feels harder to uproot this time: my home is here, most of my friends are here.

But the restlessness is growing. Gnawing at me on a weekly basis. I think that is why I've taken FIVE vacations this year.

And my behavior is regressing.

I've taken up social drinking again after years of abstinence. I party more often, and have more men in my life now than when I was in my twenties.

And the idea of a hook-up is not as foreign to me now as it would have been just a few short years ago.

I went to Dewey Beach for the first time this past weekend and experienced a culture I haven't been involved in since I lived in Daytona all those years ago.

I'm acting like a teenager. Something feels "off". Something is UP.