As a student in Japan, I was introduced to businessmen, to teach English, during their real estate boom. They just so happened to be the children of fathers who had buildings near the Imperial Palace, so became rich (on paper, 100MM+ USD) through no effort. Their lives were about as devoid of happiness that I have ever seen. After partying, hookers, golf, eating at every gourmet place in town, and foreign trips, life became uninspiring and they were a morose bunch to hang out with for dinner and drinks after our language classes. No thanks. A person needs purpose to enjoy life.

> unfulfilled by indulging my whims

You see, that's what I don't get. There are _so_ many things to do that interest me. I will never have enough time to do them.

Yes, but you might still have enough time to morph into a person who finds doing all that stuff unfulfilling. Humans are amazing at adaptation.

It's an extension of graduation depression in a way. You have essentially succeeded at the most advertised metric of life, money. If you view life as a linear progression of growing success, then that's the logical conclusion. Good job, you win.

And I'd guess this is also why midlife crises are a thing. Once you've got your beautiful family, house, car and stable job, what's next?

Apologies if this is pedantic but, just the opposite, mid-life crises arise because of the realization that the gap between your accomplishments and your ideals is larger than you thought it would be by the time you reached middle age.

Seems strange trying to define precisely why people might have a crisis in the middle of their life, as if there would be a single reason.

this is not pedantic if it's the definition of a mid life crisis (I don't know), but just wrong if people worry about different things :-)