Thirty-five is the new forty-five. And not in a good way. It's the new age for a midlife crisis. This social passage was once reserved for us to "enjoy" in our late forties and fifties. It was triggered as thoughts of status, achievement and being "over the hill", along with imminent retirement and death, came to the fore. We can now worry about all those same issues, and dabble in the usual expressions of midlife insanity, sooner than we thought. Isn't 21st-century life fabulous?
My husband assures me that when he reaches this new and improved milestone he will not grow a ponytail, buy a fast car or find a younger woman. I have told him that I'm not worried about excessive rock star-wannabe hair growth - a sharp implement such as a pair of scissors or a large meat cleaver in the middle of the night can fix that. And if he buys a sports car, then I'm likely to follow suit. And as for any female distractions, well, my husband has been given fair warning to banish even the most remote thought of this that he may harbour.
According to a study by Relate, a UK-based charity with 70 years of experience in supporting relationships, people aged 35 to 44 are the unhappiest; work, money and loneliness are the key factors. Nearly a third of the 35- to 44-year-olds surveyed said they had left a job because of a bad relationship with a colleague (a pedantic, unqualified, slave driver-type boss?). Almost as many said they thought their family relationships would improve if they worked fewer hours.
I think the stuffy boss who makes you do complicated and time-consuming work that is completely pointless is a big factor in this misery. And for office workers, such bosses have an additional torture instrument at their disposal: the demand for useless PowerPoint presentations. Have you ever written a 24-month company strategy in PowerPoint? I have. You can write only about 25 to 50 words on one page. The result is that one of your company's most important documents looks like a children's book.
I used to fight the good fight and insist that strategy documents be written in applications such as Word, so that complex ideas could be properly communicated. The Demanding Boss would say unhelpful things such as: "If it can't be said on one slide, then it's not worth saying." Or, "CEOs have only a 15-second attention span. If they can't grasp the PowerPoint picture, then you've lost them." And if you can make the pretty pictures whoosh in and out of the slide with clever animations and sound effects, then you can be sure that the company will be saved, sales will rise and bonuses will be granted. That is, of course, as long as you - the office slave who has nothing else to do, least of all go home to a loving family- work through the weekend to put together a 100-slide presentation in yet another different template issued by the branding team. Don't forget to include all that clever whooshing.
To be honest, compared to constructing that tome of animated slides, a midlife crisis suddenly sounds very appealing.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk
