I love when an idea, inspiration or theme pops up in different places in a short period of time or when I see/read/hear variations on the same general notion and then get the uniquely nerdy pleasure of pulling them together into a unified perspective. Recently, I was at dinner with a group of folks and the topic of volunteering came up. One member of our party scoffed at the North American practice of giving away our labor for free. In her homeland, she told us, people might be socialists, but they expect to get paid for their effort. Point taken. And then there was this piece by a True/Slant colleague that got my brain churning. I agree with her point that an outlet like the Huffington Post relying on crowdsourcing free content from byline-hungry college students is crass, but I don’t sign on to the idea that the only writing worth doing is the stuff that nets you cash in hand.

Photo by Dan Callahan

The logic behind her stance is pervasive, though. Get a job, get a better job, get a promotion, get elected, get a girlfriend, get rich, get invited to an Oscar after party. Purely altruistic cause-based volunteering aside, the deciding factor when figuring out whether or not to undertake a project or activity is what the pay off will be and that pay off is measured in (relative) money, power or fame. And if it doesn’t contribute to one of these bottom lines, it ain’t worth your time. Unless you see a clear path from inspiration to near-instanteous monetization (the most emetic word in the English language, FYI), your business idea is useless. I refer to it as a Socratic bastardization – forget about the unexamined life, it’s the unprofitable life that isn’t worth living. Why take a bellydancing class when you could be front row at one of those Rich Dad, Poor Dad seminars? Why learn to silk screen when you could be hitting the golf course (that is what ambitious young go-getters do, after all)? Unless it has a hook that will land you on Oprah or pave the way to a book deal, forget about blogging*. Doing things for fun, free or without an eye to the immediate pay-off or incentive is for suckers or for the self indulgent.

Except that it’s not. Not every choice we make needs to be subjected to a rigorous upwardly mobile cost/benefit analysis. Doing something because it sounds like fun, challenges your brain, or just gets you out of the house on a Tuesday night when you might otherwise down a bottle of zinfandel and drunk dial your most recent ex is perfectly valid. Not every action needs to be vetted to see how it contributes to your personal brand (and if you’ve never heard of personal branding, please say a prayer of gratitude to the deity of your choice. Go ahead, I’ll wait). Your whole existence is not a cosmic job interview or college application. You’re actually supposed to spend it engaging in activities and pursuing choices that you believe will make you happy (and sometimes being spectacularly wrong in the process) or help you become a smarter/stronger/braver person vs. ones that you think look good on paper or help you get ahead as you stand around like that actorly cliche, one hand on your hip and demanding to know what your motivation is (How about feeling something? Is that good enough?) It’s okay to make typos, scribble over bad ideas or doodle pictures of T-Rexs in the margins. Forget about C.O.D., life is meant to be undertaken on spec. I repeat, LIFE IS MEANT TO BE UNDERTAKEN ON SPEC.

Maybe doing X will lead to Y, or maybe it will lead to B instead or straight into a brick wall or a U-turn. But of all the reasons not to do it (illegality, the chance of bodily injury, distaste for public nudity), the fact that you can’t clearly see how it will help you get ahead or that it might undermine your carefully constructed public persona (constructed for the purpose of being as inoffensively appealing as possible to those to whom you give the power of judgment over you – employers, potential partners, the gov’t, that really snotty barista who rolls her eyes at you every morning when you ask for your latte to be extra hot) shouldn’t be amongst them.

Now who’s up for eloping to Vegas? I pinky swear we can have the whole mess annulled in Reno 48 hours later.

* Here’s where I tell you that I don’t make money from GenMeh, not even loose change from AdSense. In fact, this site cost me a pretty good chunk of coin to create and manage. But it’s my platform, my theoretical test bed, my performance art. It’s where I practice my craft. Do I expect that my online writing will open the door to other online and offline opportunities wherein I don’t have to snag all my statistical data second hand from the Pew Research Center? Absolutely. Is that why I write here? Absolutely not. It just happens to be a more dignified medium than a soapbox in the town square next to the dude yelling something incomprehensible about the impending Rapture.

So, I’ve been sporadically watching the Olympics. And I’ve noticed something. Well, two somethings. The first being that  tapered white sweat pants as part of an official uniform is an abomination. Ralph Lauren should be ashamed. God, even Dov Charney and the American Apparel misogyny machine could have turned out something more wearable. And secondly (and more relevantly), has been the absolute explosion of hard luck backstories – injuries, addiction, abject poverty, dead parents, natural disasters. We’re veering into American Idol audition territory here. These tales of woes are being given equal billing with the athletes’ performances. Suddenly, it’s not enough to win your speed skating heat, now you must be the son of illiterate Appalachian miners who spent their life savings to send you to the big city for training camp when you were eight and are cheering you on from the stands, having taken their first ride on an “aeroplane” to be by your side in Vancouver. And I’m not even exaggerating much. When did pure talent stop being enough?

Photo by Daniel Coomber

I’ve written before about how young adults don’t have the same reverence and respect for authority that previous generations might have possessed. While they were faced with leaders and luminaries just as flawed (if not more so) than the ones we’ve grown up with, they seemed to have a faith in the offices, the system and the existence of genuine heroes that we don’t. Hand in hand with this goes a dismantling of the idea of celebrity as idol. The bloom is off the rose. We’re now privy to almost every detail (no matter how mundane or unflattering) of the lives of the rich and famous. And after you’ve seen someone stumble out of a car sans underwear, heard them discusses their eating habits, break-ups and procreation plans in TMI detail in magazines or into Billy Bush’s mic, downloaded their sex tape and browsed grainy photos of their vacation frolicking splashed across tabloid covers or on TMZ, you feel as if you know them, and not as a star, as a familiar.

Enter the new cult of relatability. If stars can no longer be our larger-than-life icons, we demand ever increasing proof that they’re just like us. If we can’t beat ‘em (when it comes to acting, athletic achievement or just being superhumanly beautiful), we want to join ‘em by hearing about all of the ways in which they’re just like (or maybe even worse off!) than us. Jennifer Aniston’s entire career over the last five years is predicated on appealing to every woman who’s ever been dumped for someone they suspected was prettier/cooler/sluttier/more popular than they could ever be. Go ahead and feel righteous indignation and empathy for her abject loneliness (all manufactured, bien sur) while girlfriend laughs all the way to the bank.  Being an underdog isn’t good enough. We demand increasing pathos and we feel it’s our right to be along for every step of the way with an all-access pass – rise to the top, success and glory, hubris and pride, being brought low by circumstance or personal weakness and the slow, chastened (hear that, Tiger Woods?) climb back into our fickle affections – the latter two stages being the real attention grabbers. Fitzgerald had it dead wrong. Not only are there second acts aplenty in American lives, those are really the only ones we care about these days.

So it’s only natural that we should see the humanizing fairy waving her magic wand over our Olympic athletes. And she has her work cut out for her – these people aren’t like us. They ski faster, jump higher, race harder and have devoted their whole lives to training and discipline. That’s all well and good, but what about dead grandmas? And DUIs? And a father who built a boat so that your family could escape across the Adriatic and your mother bailed said boat with one arm while holding you with the other (that one is true, BTW). We’re a venal,  jealous, yet oddly compassionate, species. Extraordinary talent is alienating, sob stories are endearing and engaging.  Humbled athletes who have learned their lesson (Hey, Bode Miller!) and reformed their badboy ways (Not gonna get sent home in disgrace this time, are you, Jeret Peterson?) get our seal of approval. And if you have the gall to be at the top of your game and not have a compelling tale of woe, you damn well better have a tabula rasa personality a la Sidney Crosby or cultivate an aw-shucks dude-next door demeanor in the vein of Apolo Anton Ohno. And, FYI,  we’re still going to be waiting around for the other shoe to drop.

The colonization of the formerly private sphere by the public fascinates me endlessly. All the world is a stage and one that is becoming increasingly crowded, with average joes mixing with those who would have been off-limits idols in days past. Those at the younger end of the Gen Y spectrum don’t know or remember any other reality other than one in which every aspect of their life could potentially be opened to public evaluation and validation. They expect the same of their celebrities. Even if you have nothing to hide, the unwillingness to play by the rules of full disclosure  makes it seems as if you do. And that impression of secrecy, that playing of the privilege card will do more to damn you in the eyes of fans and followers than a homemade sex tape or drug problem ever could.

Hate To Break It To You is a recurring feature wherein we dispense succinct home truths that everyone could benefit from facing up to, unpleasant as they may be.

This one goes out to everyone who’s ever been hella pissed off at the story of the Prodigal Son.

Life is not a meritocracy. I’ve been meaning to tell you that for a while (and it’s not as if I haven’t hinted at it before), but I recently saw Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins* and the whole theme of the ugly truth of the American Dream not panning out for everyone reminded me that, yeah, input and output aren’t always aligned.

Photo by kevinthoule

Hard work and talent and eating all of your vegetables without complaint and wanting it so much that it’s all you can think and even breathe about doesn’t always pay off. Well, what does then? Nepotism, luck, right place at the right time, cleavage, the ability to convince middle-aged women that you find them sexually desirable, sociopathy, good hair and teeth, shrewdly reading and manipulating the zeitgeist like the Wizard of Oz, ruthlessness, coquetry, singleminded self promotion, selling your soul, being all things to everyone, etc, etc. If there was a surefire recipe, wouldn’t we all be in the kitchen whipping up a batch of personal glory right now?

People who are less talented, less awesome, more venal and more vapid than you will sometimes get what you want. Ain’t that a kick in the head? Attempting to beat these folks at their own game is not only likely to prove futile, it will leave you feeling frustrated and slightly soiled. I also don’t recommend that you let resentment about this inequality of opportunity fester inside of you and warp you into a Charlie Brown sad sack or a gun-toting academic.

The conventional path to the top is pretty much gridlock as far as the eye can see. You can join the traffic jam, but forget about getting anywhere or doing anything more productive than staring at the bumper of the car in front of you for the next 20 years (not to mention feeling irrationally pissed off that they have a pair of neon pink fuzzy dice dangling over their rear view mirror). If you want to move forward, you’re going to have turn off the ignition, lock the doors behind you and start out on foot. Forget competing with the seeming golden children, you’re going to have to carve out your own opportunities, make your own map to a place that you’ve invented, hack a shortcut through the woods with a homemade machete or  start as small as launching a blog for your writing after receiving the 17th rejection letter from a major publishing house. It’s tough and there’s no guarantee of the pay-off, but if the only other option is fighting blind luck and a hoard of post-modern P.T. Barnums, it might just be your best bet. Sure beats shooting the President (sorry, Sondheim).

* Skip it, unless your John Wilkes Booth is as natty a dresser as ours was and your Sam Byck is a dead ringer for my (imaginary)  indie pop boyfriend. Heck, even then you can still give it a pass.

I promised that I’d offer a rough and ready guide to Project Guinea Pig, in which you acknowledge that you can’t predict the future, stop trying to and start diving down interesting rabbit holes as you encounter them, without thinking about how these life tangents will affect A) your personal “brand”  B) your five-year plan C) your upward mobility D) all of the above and then some.

Photo by Thorsten Becker

How To Be A Guinea Pig: A Tutorial

Get a handle on logistics

Before you can be wonderfully spontaneous and unfettered, you’ll need to do some legwork.  Figure out the minimum cash flow you need in order to maintain a tolerable quality of life. If you have the relative luxury of being able to save up for a couple of months of potential dark night of the soul expenses (like I managed to do – I’m a scrimper, no doubt), absolutely do it.  If you’re inclined to downsize yourself out of a lot of unnecessary possessions, so much the better (following whims is easier if you don’t have to load up the U-Haul first). And even if you don’t plan to relocate to a strange city to start from scratch, having the cash to pursue non-freebie flights of fancy (Fencing lessons! A weekend road trip to Carhenge!) never hurts.

Realize that it might not work out

Maybe you aren’t cut out for being aimless (maybe I’m not cut out for it, either).  Maybe you need order and structure and deadlines to sleep at night. Maybe you’ll gamely grind through the entire experiment and not feel enlightened or edified at the end of it. Maybe you’ll open yourself up to the whims of the universe and the universe will totally blow you off. It can happen. It might happen.  If you’re looking for a guaranteed miracle or epiphany,  save your money and trek to Lourdes instead.

Give yourself permission

The first hurdle is overcoming the worry about what others will think of you if you take a temporary timeout from upward mobility. Let’s try a little game of imagination. Think of your mother. Think about talking to her on the phone. Think about her filling you in on all the gossip from back home.

Can you believe that Matt and Jess are expecting another baby and they’re still not married?

You remember that Amy girl you graduated with? Well, I saw in the paper where she’s got this big time job at NASA now.

You’ll never guess who got arrested for shoplifting boxes of Sudafed from Walgreens!

How long does any of this stay in your head? 10 seconds? The length of the conversation? Two days, but only because you take a giggle fit as you pass a Walgreens on your way to work? That’s exactly how long your  information (as reported by their respective mothers) resonates for Matt, Jess, Amy and the unnamed shoplifter-cum-meth maker.

But what about what you think of yourself? Even if you can dismiss others’ fleeting judgments, what about all of your internal expectations, pressures and unmet potential? How will you ever look at yourself in the mirror if you bail on your biorobotics PhD to tour dive bars throughout the Midwest with your half-assed jam band?

Think about it this way –  Is the PhD making you happy or are you still battling the nagging fear of not doing or being enough? If you’ve condemned yourself to carrying around an albatross of guilty inadequacy, why not do so while having the time of your life grooving to Phish cover songs? I kid. Sorta. My point is that  if you’re doing everything “right” according the Young & Ambitious playbook and you still feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled, can changing courses and pursuing a more “selfish”  trajectory actually make you feel that much worse? I’m gonna call BS on that one.  If it’s a question of damned if you do and damned if you don’t, why not opt for being damned while doing something that gets your motor running vs. being simultaneously damned and dejected?

Set a time limit

This serves two purposes. It provides a little structure, especially for those us who get angsty at the idea of endless ambiguity. Secondly, it forces you to dive into the deep end, instead of splashing around in the kiddie pool with your water wings on. You’ve only got a finite amount of time (in my case, a year to possibly remake my life in the image of a Gillian Welch song ) to cram full of as many adventures, detours, false starts, mistakes, object lessons and anecdotes as possible. There’s no time for dithering, just doing.

I was recently quoted in a National Post story about the social media dimensions of  Toronto (largest city in Canada for those not in the know) mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone’s sex scandal. If you found my site through those channels, welcome!  You can click here to read my original take on the imbroglio and its lessons for the rest of Generation Y.

This site, Generation Meh,  focuses on personal and professional development guidance for twenty/thirtysomethings (i.e., the quarter-life crisis set) delivered in the form of pep talks, common sense primers and tough love beatdowns.

To help you get acquainted, here’s a small sample of what GenMeh is all about:

Generation Manifesto

Expiration Dated: Of Lost Luggage And Missed Connections

You Aren’t Going To Change The World And That’s Okay