Gen X and Me

Jonathan sent me this last week, and we have been reeling and talking ever since.

I know it hit a chord for our tiny demographic because we each received the story about four more times, from four more friends.

Indeed, if you were NOT born between 1964 and 1979, the period Scott describes as being afflicted with this particular kind of malaise that is unique to us, but no one cares about because we are too small a demographic group to matter, nestled as we are, in the shadows of the ever dominant Baby Boomers, then, just skip this blog entry. It will just feel like narcissistic chatter. Which, in a way, it is. I am Gen X, after all.

But if you were our age cohort, then really, I would consider this story required reading. For myself, I am going to post it beside my desk. Not because it is inspiring. It is not. It is almost numbingly depressing. But because it is, in the end, a clarion call for action.

I read the story, about Gen X having a mid-life crisis, and I wanted to say "No! I know no one like that!"

Unfortunately, I found the story eerily described almost everyone I know. There are some gender differences of course.

Scott's theory, in a very simplified nutshell, is this: Our generation went from the immaturity of adolescence to mid-life crisis, with no adulthood in between.

Beneath that, is a deeper feeling, among many our age, that we are just losers. We know we are not. We are smart. We are successful. But inside, many of us carry this feeling. Those older than we are do not. Even if they are not doing anything any more spectacular than we are. Our loserness is part of our essence.

There are reasons for this, I suppose. I graduated the year after Black Monday, when the country was in a full on recession. I left the country to get a job and had a grand adventure. I got a job for the LA Times when there was a hiring freeze. I was one of the last ones in. After me, there were few younger hires, and the great dismantling of American Journalism began.

I did everything my parents told me to do, in a slightly rebellious, slightly fuck you kind of way. But still, despite going years without health care, or leaving the country for years, or daring to take out student loans in dying fields, I followed the norms laid out before me. I eventually got health care. I got a reputable job (my parents didn't like it, but it was legit, something that impressed other people), I got a 401 K, I bought a house, I settled down and got married.

But nothing worked out the way it was supposed to. The whole system crumbled. My former company is bankrupt and journalism as I knew it is almost dead. My 401 K lost half its value. Even with health care every trip to the doctor is astronomically expensive. We bought a house and the value skyrocketed then crashed. We have an interest only mortgage. By the time my children hit school age the entire nation's education was in crisis and health care was melting down. I won't even add in Jonathan's end of the deal. We just feel screwed.

I feel lucky. I like my life. But we are in a weird little sub group. Those just ahead of us got in before the doors shut for good. They can keep going the same way. They will get pensions, social security, and probably can work at their career without utterly reinventing themselves until they retire. They still believe they are the center of the world. And because of their sheer numbers, they are.

Those behind us are tech-heads who live in a new world. They weren't allowed into our world so they got super educated and did their own thing and now, lots of times, they have already started their own companies, and make more money than we do. Their parents supported them more than ours did and they are set.

We are just lost somewhere in the middle. And now what?

Where do we plug in? We have high expectations but nowhere to go. We are so smart, but the established jobs are all taken. I hear the same people on NPR that I did when I graduated from college. For baby boomers, every job has become a supreme court justice position, you take it and then do it until you die. It is lifetime employment.

It doesn't help that I think most men of my generation just did not want to grow up. They did not want to work, they did not want to marry, they did not want to have children. Many are supported by their super ambitious wives. Women, I think, have to grow up when a kid arrives. We cannot see ourselves as adolescents forever. We are given away by our bodies.

President Obama said it first. We are tired of the Baby Boomers and their issues. We want to move on.

Reading AO Scott's story made me feel the same way.

Still, I look around, and I see that all of us, we crave more. We are so dissatisfied with ourselves. We know we are good. But we just can't feel it. We feel betrayed by history.

I am ready to do something on my own.

Stay tuned.