How I started a PHD but got a Website Instead

The genesis of Midlifexpress was a botched attempt at a PHD. Initially my plan was to devote three years researching mobile devices in education based on my observations of teaching technology in high schools. I obtained a scholarship attached to an existing funded research project and was poised to be a full time student in the Education Faculty at my local university.

However, it became obvious shortly after I began my research that I didn’t like either the project or my supervisor and I quit under fairly unpleasant circumstances. My wish to pursue a career in academia had been short lived particularly after working at the university and witnessing petty squabbles amongst academics, ego driven research projects and a lack of funding and resources to teach students properly. I opted to leave academia behind and use my creative talents elsewhere.

I wanted to do something combining my interests in writing and web design that would allow me to make a living. Shortly after the indignity of my PHD episode I took my young son on a holiday to Dolphin Heads Resort in Mackay, Queensland.  I was intent on combining the holiday with writing a series of educational texts on design for primary school children.

However, I was unfocused, tired and spent much of the time in Mackay by the pool or watching movies. This gave me time to think about the problems facing midlife women. I wondered whether I was having a midlife crisis – my youth had gone, I was unhappy with my teaching career, had failed at academia and felt empty and restless. I was at a loss as to my future.

Whilst I was still in Mackay I trawled the internet seeking something fun to do or groups to join for women my age. I wanted to know if women felt like I did once they got into their late thirties and forties. With all the websites in all the world available my keyword searches on midlife women only returned health and menopause sites. However, I did stumble across a site advertising week long camel rides in the desert near Alice Springs and promptly made a booking for my family. I contemplated returning to a life full of travel like I used to do in my 20’s.

On my return from Mackay I read Susan Shellenbargers  book  "The Breaking Point - How Female Midlife Crisis is Transforming Today's' Women". Inspired by her interviews with midlife women who had changed their lives, I decided to create a website - an information portal or guide to midlife. Instead of the Hitchhikers Guide to Europe or Lonely Planet’s backpacking guides, this was to be a guide for midlife women.

I created a few mock-up templates for the site in Adobe Illustrator and then in Dreamweaver but was unhappy with the results. In the end I used Joomla, a free content management system that had inbuilt functionality which would relieve me of the laborious process of coding it myself. All I had to do was alter the templates and insert my own images. It was still a big job and I spent  many hours on graphic design, writing articles, programming and trying to teach myself how to use the Joomla interface.

In the early days of creating the site my sister Claire contributed articles and ideas as well as the website name - Midlifexpress. I launched the site in October 2008 and spent the past few years adding content at night or during holidays. In the interim we moved interstate from inner city Melbourne to rural Tasmania, I returned to teaching high school and have found a new passion in gardening.

However, I think about that time in Mackay when I was at a turning point and how it propelled me to create the site. I haven’t yet achieved my goal of working on the site full time, nor has it reached the target audience as widely as I’d hoped. Partly this is to do with Google and not being high on the search engine but also not having time to market the site.

I would love to work on it full time, have video and audio interviews, promote companies and employ midlife women to write and work on the site with me. However, this won’t happen in the foreseeable future. On the positive side I have enjoyed creating something special and have never regretted turning my energies away from a PHD and into Midlifexpress.

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Written by Sue Bell