💥 Let It Rip: Rethinking Midlife Through Ikigai

With a tip of the cap to The Breakfast Club—have you ever asked yourself “Who am I?” over and over again like Brian in detention? Or maybe, like the Talking Heads, “How did I get here?” 🤔

Every journey starts with questions. And sometimes, a book shows up with answers you didn’t know you were looking for. For me, that book was How to Ikigai by Tim Tamashiro.

📚 What Is Ikigai—and Why It Hit Home

Tamashiro introduces a simple but powerful framework called the Ikigai Map:

💗 Do what you love

💼 Do what you’re good at

🌍 Do what the world needs

💰 Do what you can be rewarded for

It’s adapted from Marc Winn’s popular Venn diagram and reframed as a “treasure map” to uncover your purpose. Tamashiro also breaks it down into:

Half Ikigai: personal fulfillment (love + skill)

Full Ikigai: fulfillment with impact and sustainability (adding service + reward)

But what really stuck with me was his idea of a purposeful pause—a kind of grown-up gap year. A time to explore, zero in, and rethink. See image below 👇

🧠 My Own Pause: Not a Crisis, But a Compass

I’m not in a midlife crisis. I haven’t bought a Corvette or started wearing gold chains. But I am reflective. Reprioritizing. Rethinking.

After leaving the corporate world, I was called to help manage my aging parents’ lives. As my sister and I joke, I became a first-time parent in my early 50s—with two “kids” who raised me. 😅

It’s not the “sandwich generation,” but it’s definitely the parenting our parents generation. And being out of state adds its own challenges. Still, I’m wise enough to recognize how fortunate I am—my parents made some smart moves earlier in life, and not everyone gets that kind of runway.

🏌️‍♂️ From the Back 9 to the Clubhouse

There’s something sobering about having a VIP seat to the aging process—managing care costs, navigating decisions, and watching someone who’s finished the back 9 of life head toward the clubhouse for the last time… and often needing help finding it. Whether it’s memory loss, confusion, or the quiet unraveling of Alzheimer’s, you start thinking differently. You start asking better questions.

If you know, you know!

🧓 If this resonates, you may also want to read The True Cost of Elder Care in America—It Goes Far Beyond Dollars. It’s a deeper look at what caregiving really demands—from finances to emotional bandwidth.

I’m not chasing Instagram trend spots, and I’m not ready for a tour bus with retirees in their 70s. I’m somewhere in between—too young to settle, too old to pretend. How to Ikigai helped me reframe that space.

🎨 Rediscovering Creativity (and Myself)

I used to think of myself as a creative type. Then life happened. I traded creativity for a steady paycheck and health insurance. But lately, something’s shifted.

Now, I wake up excited to work. My mind doesn’t escape the mundane—it mines it for ideas. I find myself still at my desk at 8:00 PM, sports talk humming in the background, realizing I forgot to eat dinner. 🎧🍽

I don’t know where this leads. I don’t have a five-year plan. But I’ve learned it’s better to start and figure it out along the way than to wait until everything feels “ready” and never begin.

🚀 So… Let It Rip

This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a moment. A pause. A pivot. A quiet rebellion against burnout, against waiting, against the idea that purpose has to be perfect.

If you’re somewhere between the back 9 and the clubhouse, between creativity and caregiving, between “How did I get here?” and “What’s next?”—you’re not alone.

Let it rip. 🎯

And if any of this resonates—if you’re feeling stuck, curious, or just ready to rethink what fulfillment looks like—I’d recommend checking out How to Ikigai by Tim Tamashiro. It’s not a blueprint, but it might just be the nudge you need to start asking better questions.

As a value-driven person, I want y’all to know: the paperback is currently 29% off on Amazon as of today. I first discovered it through the CloudLibrary app via the Palm Beach County Library System—so if you’re more of an audiobook listener or library lover, that’s a great way to dive in too. 📚🎧. 👇 Amazon link below. (As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)