Richard Blake lies wide awake.
It’s 3:17am.
He turns over carefully so he doesn’t wake Mariska. Her steady breathing is a kind of reassurance – but also a reminder. Of how far apart they’ve drifted. Of how alone he feels even when she’s lying beside him.
He exhales.
But the mind keeps racing.
Work.
Always work.
The board meeting was earlier this week. It came and went – it was fine. Just… fine. Nothing blew up. But nothing shifted either.
He walked out of that room and sat in his car with the same dull ache he’d had going in. No momentum. No spark. No clarity. Just more numbers, more expectation, and the same unspoken worry about where ThriveWorks Solutions is really heading.
It used to energise him – back when it was about vision, building, making something that mattered. Now? It’s become something else. A machine with moving parts that never sleep. The people don’t seem to care like they used to. Culture feels transactional. And he can’t remember the last time he came home excited about anything.
Speaking of home… there’s Luke – his 15-year-old son.
Teenage tension? Probably. But something deeper too. The way Luke looks at him – sometimes with admiration, other times with an edge. It’s like he’s not sure if Richard is the man he wants to become, or the man he wants to avoid becoming.
That one cuts deep.
He sits up quietly. Pads down the hall to the kitchen.
Boils the kettle. No caffeine – rooibos will do.
His mind keeps looping back to the same mantra –
“You’ve got to provide. You’ve got to provide. You’ve got to provide.”
It feels like it’s all about money.
It’s about giving his family the life they deserve.
He promised Mariska they’d do Croatia next year – something about the blue of the Adriatic and olive trees in summer. But if he’s honest, they’ll be lucky if they can swing a week in Plettenberg Bay.
Varsity fees for Emma – their 18-year-old daughter – are looming. Will she stay in res? Does she need a car? What will it all cost?
He tells himself it’s just about the money – but he knows deep down it’s not. It’s the pressure of holding everything up. The fear of failing them. The sense that his worth is tied to what he can provide.
The weight is relentless.
The maths doesn’t add up.
And underneath it all, a quieter question creeps in:
What happened to the man I used to be?
To the fire, the spark, the hope?
He’s grateful, of course. He really is.
But he’s also exhausted. Angry at himself for being here. Resentful that his life—and his perceived worth—have been reduced to just providing.
He misses the days when life felt a bit more… alive. When joy wasn’t something he had to schedule or justify. When his dreams felt closer, not like echoes from a former life.
And so he sits at the kitchen counter in the half-light, stirring his tea, asking the question many men ask but rarely speak aloud:
“Surely there’s more than this?”
There Is a Way Through
There is more.
But it’s not always what we expect.
Sometimes it begins with making space for the questions—before the answers come.
What if your exhaustion, your anger, your quiet resentment—aren’t signs you’re broken, but signs you’ve been carrying too much for too long? What if they’re not failures, but an invitation?
To slow down.
To turn inward.
To rebuild from something deeper than pressure and performance.
You don’t need to stay stuck in the spin.
You don’t have to figure it all out alone.
If this story resonates with you, you’re not alone.
Men everywhere—especially those in their 40s and 50s—carry this kind of quiet weight. You don’t need to solve it all on your own. Coaching offers a space to begin untangling it. No pressure. No performance. Just space to be real.
📩 If you’d like to explore this, reach out. Or just reply to this with a simple: “That’s me.” I’ll take it from there.
#MaleMidlife #LifePurpose #Stuckness #Freedom