Well, here we go.

I’ve taken my first word-steps into the dank, smelly jungle that will be my column for the 2011-12 school year – suckling at the giant milky teat of The Uniter. (All summer I’ve been promising myself that I’d use the word “teat” in the first two sentences of my first column back. Yay for setting achievable goals!)

Recently, I have noticed some changes in my life – changes of which I am only now beginning to understand the true significance.

Last May, I cut off what was probably the most impressive Kentucky Waterfall that any one of you will never see again.

I’ve also stopped performing weekly shows of offensive musical comedy. I mean, I still play once in a while, but I’m certainly not doing it as a source of gainful employment anymore.

What’s more, I recently got a job! And not just any job but, like, a big boy job!

Finally, I’ve even noticed that I’m doing far fewer drugs every day than I used to. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still doing lots and lots of drugs, because everyone knows you need to do drugs to have fun (and I love fun!).

So let’s see, less drugs, haircut, not dicking around on the guitar every week and an actual big boy job? Oh my god! This can only mean one thing!

I must be having a midlife crisis!

Think about it: when most dudes have their midlife crises they quit their jobs, grow out their hair, start dicking around on a guitar and start doing drugs.

This behaviour describes my life to an unsettling degree. Or, at least it did. But now I’ve just gone and done the exact opposite.

It makes perfect sense. There’s nothing inherent in the concept of a midlife crisis that specifically makes a dude go out and buy a sports car; the midlife crisis is all about rejecting the lifestyle you’ve grown into and feel trapped in – even if only for a brief (and often embarrassing) time.

It’s all relative. It’s like when kids rebel against their parents; there isn’t one, ever-present behaviour in all rebelling teenagers.

They don’t all necessarily need to start smoking meth and wearing black fish-net arm stockings (although I think we can agree that is definitely the coolest way to rebel), they just need to reject their parents in some way.

That’s why people raised by hippies always turn into steak-devouring pricks who cheat on their taxes and bathe compulsively.

The good thing about knowing that this responsible behaviour I’ve been seeing in myself is just a midlife crisis is that I know it’ll pass. Then I can get back to the good life.

The bad thing about knowing that I’m having my midlife crisis at the age of 34 is knowing that I’m going to die at exactly 68 years old. Do the math. You’ll see I’m right.

Whatever. If there’s nothing I can do about it, I may as well start growing a ponytail for when I finally move past this silly “job” phase and come to my senses.

J.Williamez wrote this column while pretending to do work at his “big boy” job.

Published in Volume 66, Number 3 of The Uniter (September 15, 2011)