Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

Finding new thrills in older skin

There's something almost comforting about hearing Bowie admit this. We're sold the idea that reinvention and staying young are the same thing, that settling down means settling for less. But what he's describing is actually harder—it's the work of finding real excitement in a different phase of life, not just chasing the same thrills in a weathered body.

The struggle he names is something most people feel but rarely talk about directly. You can't just swap "youthful things" for "mature things" like switching wardrobes. The loss is real. You do grieve staying up all night, being the person everyone wants to hang out with spontaneously, the sense that anything could still happen. But Bowie's point is that something else becomes possible too: a kind of enthusiasm that doesn't depend on proving yourself or running from boredom.

What's quietly radical here is that he didn't pretend the transition was seamless or that he magically became zen about aging. He struggled. But he also suggests that the struggle itself—the honest reckoning with what's changing—might be exactly where the real energy lives. Not in denying the shift, but in finding what actually matters to you now, not at twenty.