A story on NBC Nightly News few weeks back said folks aren't having a mid-life crisis any more. Had a couple interviews, some statistics masquerading as evidence; incomes are up, savings are up, people are travelling more than ever. Being a black-belt trend-watcher, I still can't say if I agree with the idea or not.

    This dovetailed with another NBC nugget, namely, that experts have figured out the maximum productive age, the best combination of youth and experience, to be 43. Being 41, I considered that a serious wakeup call. Just about enough to trigger a mid-life crisis.

    If I remember my seasons-of-a-man psychobabble correctly, the mid-life crisis is about identity -- the crisis based on sensing your own mortality is more of a 50s thing. The identity crisis generally has to do with the mismatch of expectations and reality, a high-faluting concept that can be summed up in one joke; I used to worry I wasn't living up to my potential. Now I worry I am.

    My thinking on these lines came about by waking up one morning and realiziing I'm part of an Invisible Generation, too young to be a Boomer and too old to be an Xer. Track the ads and the publicatons and the media and pretty much everything is marketed to younger or older audiences. If the Invisible Generation actually shows up, it's in the context of kids and parenting and hauling around soccer teams in minivans.

    The invisibility extends to my current hometown, as Richmond, Va. isn't exactly the home of the digerati. Buddy of mine was on the phone with a New York agent who told him "if you're calling from Richmond, Virginia, you can't be that good." His reply: "Tell that to my fucking Emmy."

    So with the maximum productive year staring at me from not far away, I got to thinking about taking the step up, of going off and landing some hot web job. Being a rustic at heart, I'd never much thought of living in LA or San Francisco or Seattle or New York, but the connection was undeniable. Any such job will require a move. So I floated the idea of blowing town to my buddies. And found out I was having a mid-life crisis.

    I write these sort of pieces because I try to expand the personal to the universal, but on this issue of mid-life crisis I don't know if anything is universal. I do know that in life in general, it's not what you're doing, it's what it looks like you're doing that counts. And I know that selling everything down to bare walls and hitting the road looks suspicious.

    In the end, thinking about changing jobs is a lot like looking for a girlfriend -- you're looking for someone to love you. And when it comes to looking for someone to love you, here's the best piece of advice I ever heard about that.

    Get a dog.

    ***

    G.L. Marshall occasionally reminds himself he was supposed to be a retired country gentleman by now.