Has anyone made a radical life change in your 40s?

Yes. I moved 1700 miles away from the Midwest and couldn’t be happier. A chance move thanks to my wife’s job got us to SoCal and life has been way better. For context I was in Chicago for most of my life up until the move. While I think highly of Chicago, at its core it’s still a Midwest city. What that means, that even as progressive as Chicago can be, at its core it still has strong Midwestern roots. This leads to a lot of heteronormativity as the norm, and a little bit of virtue signaling in the progressive circles (due to having to struggle against those Midwest roots folks have to perform progressivism a little more loudly and in certain ways to counteract the midwestisms). These weren’t things I was able to put my finger on until I moved away, but always felt a little off to me. And let’s not forget the weather. 8 months or so of constantly overcast skies, cold, snow, freezing rain etc, led to a fantastic dose of seasonal affective disorder that made me question my will to live (literally) every year. When the opportunity to move came up we jumped at it. It has been the best decision I have ever made. With this move this also had me restructure what my life goals were. Initially I was thinking of doing another office drone job for a modest paycheck. Then after crunching numbers, we realized that I didn’t even need to bring in that much to live comfortably since my wife’s paid very well. So I took a job at a comic shop for low stress and fun. To coincide with that I also wanted to keep making music. So I started looking through places and stumbled into a fantastic group playing hip hop/soul music. The members of the group lived in town and have become my family. We celebrate bdays, holidays, and are always hanging out. But the fun didn’t stop with that group. I got approached by another more prominent group that exists in the LA goth and deathrock scene. So I said sure I can do both. Long story short I was able to essentially become a pro musician that is now about to tour the states, Mexico and looking into Europe and getting paid decently to do so. From experience the hardest thing is setting up a new social circle. I got lucky because playing music is very social and the people I make it with are fantastic folks. I also had a distant cousin in the area to help show the ropes. But if you can nail that aspect down, you should be good. Moving away also gives you freedom to reinvent yourself a bit too. For me it was freeing to be able to shake a lot of those deep Midwest conservative type thoughts and lean into being the person that teenage me would’ve expected. I feel it’s easier to dress better and take more risks with personal fashion than Midwest living.