I first started work in the Commissioner’s Office at the Food and Drug Administration in May 2005. In the fall of 2008, I moved into a position in the Center for Biologics Research and Review. I’m not a scientist, but I played one at work. Just kidding — I focused on congressional affairs at FDA.

A couple of years ago, I took a position at the Center for Tobacco Products within FDA. It was unquestionably an upward career move. A promotion. Greater responsibility. Greater visibility. A larger staff. Increased pay. By all accounts, it was the best move I could have made.

Within a few months, I was undeniably miserable. I left the position after eight months.

After leaving that job, I returned to the same job I’d had before the promotion. I wrote more about that experience in a piece called “I Demoted Myself.”

Being back in the old job was great. It was familiar, and I had strong support from the office leadership and a fantastic staff. Maybe this was the best of it.

After about a year back in the old position, I decided to sign up for a 200-hour yoga teacher training. In my mind, the decision was purely personal. I wanted to deepen my practice and maybe offer some assistance to family and friends. About two months into the training (it was a program that met one weekend a month for eight months), I was moved by an experience in class and decided I wanted to teach — though not full-time.

I completed that training, along with a second yoga teacher training, by June 2017. Not long after, I secured the opportunity to teach two regular weekly yoga classes. The teaching schedule worked well with my work schedule.

While all this was going on last year, a position in my office — one step above me — opened up. My boss had been promoted, and I was asked whether I was interested in filling the role. I reflexively said yes and didn’t think much about it after that. (The hiring process in federal government agencies can take forever.)

Sometime last fall, the angst that didn’t hit me when I turned 50 started to creep in. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on the additional responsibility of the higher-level job, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Well… I could, but I wasn’t willing to be honest about it.

In the time between Thanksgiving and the Christmas/New Year holidays, I did a lot of thinking — and I relied on my wife to help me put some shape to my thoughts and feelings. By the time my annual performance meeting rolled around at the end of January, I had decided that my truth was simple: I was no longer interested in pursuing the promotion, and I was no longer interested in this job. It was another moment of genuine honesty — more with myself than with others.

It was tough sharing this truth with my boss, whom I adore. We both shed some tears during our discussion, but we also reached agreement and acknowledgment that this was my truth — and that it was a good thing.

A couple of months ago, I had lunch with one of the senior leaders I worked under during that “promotion job” I’d left a couple of years earlier. We talked about this and that, and I shared that I was planning to leave FDA for good. What was most illuminating about that conversation didn’t hit me until later: the decision to leave that job two years ago was really the beginning of me reaching this moment of clarity.

Turning some mythical midlife age — 50 or whatever — wasn’t what induced a crisis. Quite the contrary.

Instead of suffering from a Midlife Crisis...I am discovering Midlife Clarity.

Midlife clarity has less to do with accepting that life is short or without guarantees. Those truths are relatively easy to grasp. For me, midlife clarity is about being true to my heart — and finding comfort in no longer being willing to knuckle down at a job I don’t love or enjoy.

Of course, I worked through the normal concerns of any middle-aged person: mortgage, insurance, and other obligations and benefits associated with a salaried job. I’m not completely free-spirited… at least not yet. I spent months crunching numbers to see whether it was feasible to give myself at least a year to step away from what I don’t love, in the hope that I could connect with what fills my heart and brings me joy.

Teaching yoga is definitely something I enjoy, but I’m not certain it’s something I want to do full-time. In fact, part of this budding midlife clarity is knowing that I want to move away from framing what I do as a “full-time job” — or even needing that label at all. I don’t know whether this resistance is something I’ve earned through toiling away at one type of work for almost 26 years, but I’m going to unapologetically assert ownership of my time and headspace.

Thanks for reading. I’ll share more of my thoughts about midlife clarity in future posts, but for now I’ll close with a quote by Dr. Rebecca Ray that really resonated with me.

Creating an Empty Space