Life begins at: Change

Call it what you want - a mid-life crisis, life beginning at 40, a big mistake. But change is sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself.

For those of you who have never been before, Perth is the capital of the state of Western Australia and it is what I call my hometown. The city sits on the Swan River (more correctly known as Derbarl Yerrigan, by the traditional owners of the land) and where the water flows to the most beautiful beaches of the Indian Ocean. It is warm, both in temperature and in temperament with the relaxed atmosphere reflected in the ‘no worries’, laid-back and quintessentially Australian nature of its inhabitants.

I love Perth. But I desperately needed to get the hell out of there.

Like a coin, the flip side of the relaxed nature of this town, home to around 2 million people and many thousands of kilometres from the nearest capital city, is sleepiness. A stagnation that can feel completely and utterly suffocating at times, and boring at others. Especially if like me, your life was thrown into a spin and the beautiful albeit sleepy town offered but a tiny number of opportunities compared to its bigger counterparts.

While Perth is home, it also at times felt like I did not belong there. My peers tended to follow the unspoken path expected of Perth people. Grow up there, go to school there, live away for a little while (a year in Melbourne or London) and then return to settle down in a house not far from where you grew up. Not that there is anything at all wrong with that. Trust me, I sometimes long for that kind of stability in my life.

But since I moved back to Perth (cliche) from Sydney (slightly less cliched) in 2016 when my marriage ended, I never fully settled back in. I’ll never know if it was the city, that I had perhaps outgrown it or sought something else. Or perhaps it was the ensuring tumultuously that 2016 seemed to give birth to. From that time on, my life was filled with incredible highs - publishing books, a wonderful relationship, incredible friends, TV shows, travel and career success. But those highs only contrasted with lows that felt like nothing short of failure. Both professionally and personally, it seemed as though everything around me crumbled.

Although I resisted it at first, there seemed to be only one solution for my anhedonic state. Change. In one of my favourite articles from The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks writes, “Life changes are painful, but inevitable. And as hard as they may be, we only make things harder—and risk squandering the benefits and lessons they can bring—when we work against them instead of with them.”

Change was happening around me, no matter how much I fought it. I fought for my career and that was changing with or without my consent. When my relationship was inevitably ending, I wanted that to stop as well, even though it was desperately sad and devoid of any malice, it was probably the right thing to do. The more I fought change, the more it seemed to happen anyway. And truth be told, I wanted it. I knew that if I stayed where I was, the change would happen to me and not for me.

I remember when my dad turned 40. I was 14 at the time, and we had a surprise party at our home. He came home from work on Friday evening and the lights were dimmed so that when he walked through the door, he was greeted with the traditional cries of surprise and glee from the party attendees. I look back on that now, a year older than he was, shocked at how different our lives are. He was stable, settled and steadfast. I had so much less security and sureness and instead of seeking that out, I decided to lean, no leap into the unknown and move halfway across the world to seek a new life.

As Brooks wrote, change has been painful. I genuinely think I underestimated how difficult it has been, packing up my life and moving to London, alone, to start a new career, make new friends, new routines and new memories. But change was inevitable for me. It was already happening and I just needed to stop fighting it and not just go with it. Instead, I actively sought it out. And it has been the best decision of my life. Because I wasn’t just fighting change, I was fighting against finding out who I truly am, who I could be and what I could experience.

It’s been several months since I set foot on British soil and decided to call it home and even in the times when I am hurting, longing for the sunny skies or salty water that makes Perth so wonderful, I know that it is the very best decision that I have ever made. My life is not beginning at 40-something, but it sure has changed. And I for one, am curious as hell to see what happens next.

Note from the author: I hope you have enjoyed this substack. Thank you to the people who suggested that I give this a try. I thoroughly enjoy writing, as evidenced by three books, and I am looking forward to making this substack a personal exploration of some of the big issues that impact on my life and hope that you find some interest or even reflection for yourself in there. All photos by me unless otherwise credited.

Cottesloe Beach, Western Australia.