If I'm honest with myself, then I've settled into an early middle-aged, petty-bourgeois rut. I earn a comfortable living, live in a nice house, go on holiday six-dozen times a year and have savings in the bank. And yet...and yet I'm bored, literally to tears on occasion.
The idea of making a major lifestyle change is hatefully discombobulating, but I don't feel I can continue in this slough of...well, despond is overstating it; it's more of a dangerous world-weariness. Even cycling, my go-to passion and distraction from all life's ills for the last 25 years or so, leaves me cold. I'm jaded.
I remember Hugh Laurie talking about something like this in an interview a few years ago. He said he only realised he was depressed when taking part in a car race. He used to be quite into motor sport. He said he didn't feel anything as he raced around - no adrenaline, no fear, no joy, no angst...nothing. And that is what depression is - a total disconnect from the world of human interaction and emotion. It's not the presence of despair, so much as the absence of joy. After a while, this lack of simple pleasure eats away at you. It's difficult to countenance 40 years or so of that. That's when the problems begin I guess.
So, what to do? My usual mantra (to others at least) at moments of indecision like this is "the prospect is always worse than the reality". I do believe this to be true. But I'm much more compelling when you're not privy to the neuroses and manias that habitually fly around the inside of my skull. I all too familiar with them, which means I take my own advice with a pinch of Saxo.
