42 is, in fact, the Question

As a teenager, I knew everything. 

In my 20s, I lived too close to a inexpensive book store, and explored everything from Russian history to Zen Buddhism to protein crystallography. Even through these years of mind-expansion, deep down I still thought a lot of people made rather odd choices in life, and that on the whole there were relatively few reasonable and obvious options in any given situation. I was family-free, children-free, and time-rich. I was in control of my life and its direction, even while I wasn't certain what that direction was.

I married at 29, we had children at 33 and 36, and I began my current scientific research career after graduate school at 34. Relative to my 20s, my 30s were spent mostly in service to others, focussed on very practical concerns: feeding children, paying rent, remembering to take the rubbish bins out to the curb on Monday nights, and, after getting home late, working long into the night to do everything I could to advance the science in our laboratory.

Now I'm 42. I have zero job security, a mortgage, two beautiful daughters who want more of me, and a beautiful and patient wife who might be running low on patience. I've only just come to the realisation in the last several months that work has pretty much been using me: happy to have me while I am no cost to them, bring in more funding besides, and keep quiet about being short-changed at every turn. I've invested too much of myself into this particular career path, and allowed myself to become too specialised. Moving laterally will be tricky; I entertain ten ideas a day, and dabble further with a few of them, but none have persisted long enough yet for me to know that I will pursue them with the reckless abandon necessary to make them work.

Meanwhile, I try to be the father I really want to be for my children, the husband I really want to be for my wife, and the person I really want to be for myself. Things used to be so easy; now I feel like I know nothing. Perhaps Douglas Adams was older than his years when he wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at 27: there's quite an irony in "42" being the answer to a long-forgotten question. This blog will share my thoughts and experiences as I try to figure it out. I look forward to your thoughts and experiences, too. Please share!

© 2013 J Gaümann