Generation Meh

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  • No Day But Today

    Today, I was thinking about a conversation with a friend that took place a couple of months ago. I asked about her job and she remarked that she could see herself staying there for the rest of her career and being fine with it. I remember being completely taken aback. This wasn’t a reflection on her job, but a reaction to the oddity of hearing someone my age speak about the long term. Twenty or thirty years might as well be to infinity and beyond for most of Generation Meh.

    Photo by ronnie44052

    We talk about the future, but it’s in vague, nebulous terms – buying a house someday, starting a business, paying off our student loans. It’s not so much concrete plans as an acknowledgment that time will continue to march on and some stuff will obviously happen in the interim between the all-too-vivid now and the yet-to-be-determined then. In a way, it’s comforting. There’s always the possibility of improvement, a change in fortunes, a rising tide to lift all boats. Maybe even soon. Soon-ish? Someday?  Being relatively young, believing in better times ahead (at least at the level of the individual, best to take an ostrich-like approach to collective fate) is still plausible. After all, we were promised robot butlers, weren’t we?

    But as much as the idea of the eventual comforts us, investing in it lets us off the hook in the here and now. There was a neon sign on the Tex Mex restaurant near my old office – Free Beer Tomorrow. But the weak joke is on the patrons, of course – that mythical tomorrow never comes and the drinks are never free. It’s just a string of todays that lead us further into the future that we believe will be better than the present but aren’t actually taking steps to create.

    And yet, things are pretty tenuous without that American Dream infrastructure, aren’t they? Sure, there’s the tantalizing freedom of being able to collapse the tent, pack up your wares and move on, move out, move up at a (figurative) moment’s notice, but there’s also the worry that, without roots, a stiff wind could upend everything and you’d never find all the pieces or be able to put them together in the right order again.

    So, for the moment, Gen Meh has set up camp in our individual way stations. While we haven’t figured out the future, we also haven’t committed to the present. We know that now is not enough. Now will not suffice for the next 20, 30, 60 years. But we haven’t gotten much further than that. One foot in the present, one in the future and both eyes on the clock. And that’s where the fear creeps in. It reminds me of a (misinterpreted) conversation I had with someone once upon a time. I mentioned not wanting to just let time pass, to eventually find myself staring down the barrel of 30 and not be able to account for the years that got me there. I’m no proponent of five-year plans and scheduled existences, but I understand the nagging fear of becoming a Rip Van Winkle in your own life, the fear that if you don’t or can’t get square with the here and now, to assign it some (any?) intention, endow it with a greater purpose, that you might very well wake up one day to realize that you’re in a hot air balloon drifting three hundred yards over a Kansas wheat field with no recollection of  having untied the cord or thrown the anchor out.

    Oh my, how did that happen? is a pretty poor substitute for carpe diem, isn’t it?

  • One Simple Trick For Being Braver

    Here on GenMeh, I like to mix pragmatism in with the pep talks, so assuming that you’re theoretically on board with the just because message in my previous post, how do you move from nodding along to actually going out and, ya know,  doing stuff?

    Photo by ontilnow

    The trick to countering cowardice/natural reticence/an overabundance of fretful caution  is surprisingly simple. If you want to take more risks*, you need to reframe how you evaluate the risks. Stop asking why and start asking why not. When you’re contemplating a decision (joining an ultimate frisbee league, asking out the girl who sits two rows back and three seats down from you in Advanced Spanish, applying for the Peace Corps, etc.), don’t think of reasons why you should do X, take the decision as a given and simply debunk any arguments against it. The burden of proof is on your cautious side to provide a persuasive argument against the activity, not on your bold self (which for many of us might not be so bold in the first place) to convince you to pull the trigger.

    Think of weddings. The officiant doesn’t ask those of us in the pews to brainstorm good reasons why the bride and groom should actually go through with the whole marriage deal (Jared will make a great father someday! Kim is a wizard at budgeting!), he or she simply asks if anyone has objections or can show just cause why the pair shouldn’t get hitched. The decision is taken as a given and it’s up to the bride’s first husband (presumed dead in a horrible fire and now unrecognizable due to the reconstructive surgery) to come barreling down the aisle at the eleventh hour to prevent the bigamy in progress.

    It’s much easier to logically refute objections as to why you shouldn’t do something (But maybe that dude in my Spanish class who just asked me out is a serial killer? Hmm… but would a serial killer have such excellent dental hygiene and be so comfortable with eye contact?) than it is to require yourself to list five compelling reasons to support the implementation of any out-of-the-norm decision. This isn’t an exam. The universe doesn’t offer partial credit for showing your work, kiddos.

    So, why not? And why not NOW? Get back to me once you’ve come up with an airtight reason. And FYI, irrefutable is a hell of a lot harder in practice than in theory.

    * And by risks, I simply mean anything that falls outside of your well-worn comfort zone and not, say,  base-jumping off the Chrysler building. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

  • Why Just Because Is Just Fine

    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.

  • Olympic Sob Stories And The Cult of Celebrity Relatabilty

    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.

  • Fair Is Just A Four-letter Word

    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.

  • How To Be A Guinea Pig: A Tutorial

    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.

  • Guest Post: Marriage Advice From A Former Divorce Lawyer

    Melissa Melanson and I have known each other for years. A few months ago, I suggested she write a guest post for GenMeh. Circumstances have changed since then and that topic is rather dated, but when she pitched me on the idea of providing relationship guidance from her former legal perspective (and just in time for Valentine’s Day!), I happily took her up on it.

    P.S. No, I haven’t forgotten; I’m currently putting the finishing touches on your guide to the aimless life.

    P.P.S. Interested in writing a future guest post for GenMeh? Drop me a line and we’ll see what we can do.

    Photo by Francesca Tronchin

    Marriage Advice From A Former Divorce Lawyer

    When people find out that I practiced family law for a few years after law school, they get this uncomfortable look on their faces, like I said that I umpire cock fights or make my own hotdogs from scratch. They know that it happens, they know that it’s ugly, but they’d rather not think about it. I admit that part of the reason that I no longer practice law is because of the ugliness of marital breakdown, but it really wasn’t all doom and gloom. Change is inevitable and I was happy to help people navigate a difficult period of their lives. I also feel that I have benefited from the experience. I have never been married, but I have been up close and personal at the end of numerous unions. Eventually, you start to notice patterns. Some things are just obvious. Basically, if it could get you fired from a job or arrested, it’s a bad sign for your marriage. What I gleaned from my unique perspective on marriage is a little more subtle than that. I learned (and will gladly share with you) the kinds of things you  wish you could tell someone before they got married or before their happily-ever-after  fell apart.

    The marriage has a better chance of succeeding when both people are adults

    Think about the person you were when you were 18. How different is he/she from who you were at 22? 25? 30? Maybe you are the rare exception who was fully formed at a very young age, but most people are completely transformed by experiences like post-secondary education, living on your own and travel. Realistically, you might never fully know who you are or what you want out of life, but people grow and change considerably in their early adulthood. Before you commit your life to another person, it’s preferable to get your own life sorted. The complement to this is you shouldn’t commit to another person before they have their life sorted out either. While it’s true that people can grow apart after years of marriage, you can do a lot to avoid a situation where one partner outgrows the other if you’ve both already done most of your growing before the I do.

    If your whole life revolves around you, you’re not leaving much room for a partner

    The world is made up of givers and takers and the adage that marriage involves give and take is true. Relationships aren’t always equal, sometimes one partner is more demanding, sometimes, you take turns. Marriages seem to suffer, however, when the needs of one partner are never considered. After all, no one wants to play a supporting role in a movie about their own life. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you walk through life without asking what he/she wants and what makes him/her happy, but I’m afraid it does make you poor spouse material.

    Remember that even if it doesn’t last forever, life will go on

    Clients would often ask me, “Are you married?” and upon discovering that I was not, would ask if my line of work had created a distaste for the institution. I normally wouldn’t provide much of an answer (we’re talking about your life here, buddy) but one day a woman in her early thirties asked me, and she was the kind of the person that I was really rooting for –  a sweet person who had married a not-so-sweet man. I wanted to give her hope.So I fed her a line, which in retrospect wasn’t really a line at all, but something that I truly believe. I told her that working with people at the end of their marriage certainly has made me more cautious, or at the very least informed, about making such a commitment. But that’s not the end of the story.

    The nature of divorce law where I practiced is such that you meet people when they break up to draft a separation agreement. At that time, they’re a mess, their whole life has collapsed around them. They then have to wait a year after they separate before they can get a divorce. A lot can change in a year. People would come back stronger, happier and often would have met someone else. They could not believe how much better their lives were, and after seeing what a disaster they had been just a few months prior, sometimes I couldn’t believe it either.

    Marriage doesn’t come with a guarantee. All you can do is make the best choice you can, and recognize that just like in every aspect of our lives, we sometimes make mistakes. But even coming from my former line of work, if I haven’t ruled out marriage entirely, doesn’t that say something about its inherent risk-worthiness?

    –Melissa Melanson

  • Generation Guinea Pig

    This time last week I was frantically attempting to track down my movers in order to reclaim my meager truckload of possessions. Since then, I’ve set up my new apartment, figured out how to use a cordless drill, had coffee with one of my neighbors (and attempted to avert my eyes from his vast collection of vintage erotic fiction) and promised another that I’d never get drunk and crash into his door at 3:00 AM (apparently, the former occupants of casa de JMH couldn’t really hold their liquor), but that I would play Scrabble with him (with the warning that I’m hella competitive), checked out the coolest coworking space ever, volunteered at a bake sale for Haiti, plotted an Olympics-related hashtag revolution, subjected myself to one of Estee Lauder’s social media makeovers and walked, a lot.  And I did it all for you, dear readers. Well, kinda.

    For the last six months, I’ve been doling out the exhortations, entreaties, pep talks and tough love beatdowns here on Generation Meh, so it’s only fair that I tangibly put my money where my mouth is and prove that I do indeed live by my own rules. After all, how disillusioned would you feel if you discovered that I was actually an up and coming accountant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers who had recently bought a fabulous high-rise condo with her lawyer fiance (met him sophomore year at Brown, natch)? And that we had just adopted a chocolate lab puppy and were into wine tasting and lazy brunches at the most buzzed-about downtown hotspots? Yeah, I thought so. Fear not, as nothing could be further from the truth. The mangy, stuffed E.T. doll currently taking up residence on my poorly-assembled IKEA coffee table (complete with shellacked recipe cards I bought for 79 cents at Goodwill) can attest to that.

    See? Told you so.



    Nope, instead you get an ambiguously-careered someone who just landed in a city four and half times bigger than the one she’s lived in for the last six years, who rented her apartment sight unseen and who knows exactly two people in this metropolis. She has no clue what’s going to happen next and is surprisingly cool with that.

    As you can tell from the themes of the previous two posts, Gen Y isn’t exactly top of the class when it comes to balancing the big picture perspective with the day-to-day details. In fact, a lot of us are all forest all the time, damn the trees. We’re so busy fretting about the future and how we fit into the jigsaw puzzle of a grand scheme that we lose sight of the day-to-day potential for mini memories, pocket-sized epiphanies and other tiny bursts of humor, pathos, drama and serendipity. These things count, too. They matter. They’re cocktail party fodder, potential best man toast anecdotes, Twitter updates, texts to your best friend, cheap coffee product commercials. And by being so focused on the overarching plan (What is it? Should I have one? How do I get one?) and obsessed with meticulously  timing our lives’ milestones so that we don’t end up on the wrong part of the bell curve, we take these moments for granted, assuming  we even notice them at all.

    I’ve decided that it’s high time I give these moments their due and start living out all of GenMeh‘s collected wisdom in true guinea pig fashion. In fact, when people ask me why I’ve moved, I flash them my best manic pixie dream girl smile and  tell them it’s supposed to be an adventure and an experiment. And I mean it. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If you told me that in six months I’ll be living in Reykjavik after eloping with a dude I’ll meet after standing behind him in the Starbucks line tomorrow or that, before 2010 is out, I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my vegan bakery and artist co-op in downtown Burlington, VT, I would have to believe you.  When you leave the door wide open, you really never know who or what (for better or worse) will walk through.

    And guess what? I’m not independently wealthy, I’m not a maverick risk taker and I hate ambiguity even more than the next person, so you know that if I can tackle the challenge of being okay with plan-free living, I will surely handhold you through the process in convenient bullet-list form in my next column.

    Stay tuned.

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

    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.

    Photo by giarose

    Not everyone grows up to be Gandhi. Not all of us are meant to change the world and live capital L lives. There’s only so much paradigm-shifting talent, opportunity and luck available and you’re not a failure  just because you didn’t receive what you believe was your generationally-mandated portion of the above, although it’s easy to see why you might feel that way.

    Those of us who grew up as part of the middle-class North American majority learned that we could be anything we wanted, but somewhere along the way, we got it twisted around in our heads that we had to be everything the world wanted/needed in order to be successful. Money wasn’t enough, nor was the love of family and friends, we wanted to matter, to make a difference, to prove ourselves, even if we couldn’t define exactly what this entailed. But we knew it was big, bigger than the lives we’re living now, bigger than our cubicle jobs, our weakness for reality tv and organic, fair trade espresso. You’re nobody until the Nobel committee comes calling. We’re not supposed to settle and settling has become anything less than being multi-tasking, globe-trotting, world-saving, well-paid, well-partnered prodigies. The desire not to hide our individual lights under a bushel is a laudable one, but not everyone is going to be a game changer. And there’s no shame or failure or inadequacy in working  an “ordinary” job, in leading a quiet life, in surrounding yourself with a handful of close friends and family. In fact, those are the lives most of us end up with, with the smarter of us realizing that they’re every bit as meaningful as the marquee existences we feel we ought to aspire to. There doesn’t need to be a higher purpose, a greater mandate, a pissing contest of who has more frequent flyer miles and a bigger LinkedIn network. It’s okay not to end up a shining star and it’s more than okay not to have ever wanted to be one in the first place. It’s okay to work at Whole Foods or be a stay-at-home dad or never finish your PhD thesis. Never owning a home doesn’t make you a failure, nor does buying one four doors down from your parents. Who the hell cares if you’ve never even heard of Herzog and that you like Bon Jovi and drink PBR without a trace of hipster irony? These aren’t moral failings, folks.

    I’m absolutely not telling you to give up on your dreams, or jettison your idealism in favor of the “simple” life. Both are valid choices and they aren’t even mutually exclusive. What I am encouraging you to do is to stop living for your legacy and to take a moment to examine the implicit privilege in assuming the self-imposed middle-class Gen Y burden of “making the world a better place” out of a sense of duty instead of genuine altruism (which I’d never argue against, obviously). You’re the one choosing that yoke and you can choose to cast it off. Noblesse oblige, especially of the guilt-driven variety, is totally overrated.

  • Hooked On A Feeling

    Had variations on the same discussions with two different people this week*. I know that when that happens, it’s a pretty good bet that there’s a GenMeh piece in there somewhere (also a good bet that I will use the conversations to hone my thesis, complete with wild gesticulations, maybe some sporadic pounding on the table a la Khrushchev, depends on the day). The gist of these discussions centered around whether an utter lack of caring about the future/one’s prospects/the world as we know it was a sign of the times or the sign of a personal problem. Considering that my conversational partners were two smart, accomplished and grounded twentysomethings, I’m inclined to say that their malaise isn’t a character defect, but representative of a common (if rather rarely acknowledged) phenomenon among Gen Y. To put it succinctly, we’re burned out on caring. We’re hungry for something, but we can’t tell you what it is because we don’t know. We long for a specific feeling, but we can’t accurately name it (satisfaction?  fulfillment? contentment? self-actualization?) and we don’t know how to achieve it. We’ve grown up with the understanding that we could be anything we wanted to be, but we let the dizzying array of choices overwhelm us and instead of determining how we’d go about figuring out what it is we wanted, we stand paralyzed in front of our options, or reel drunkenly from job to job, relationship to relationship, holding our breath, waiting for an audible click.

    Photo by wili_hybrid

    And as much as we worry about never achieving that specific feeling,  we also worry that we won’t even recognize it if we ever do. We have no means of conceptualizing such a vague notion as a feeling we can’t even agree on a name for. If you don’t know where you’re going, how the hell are you supposed to know when you finally get there? Riddle me/us that.  At least with romantic love, even if you haven’t felt it, books and film are filled with a million examples, you can see it in your families, friends, the couple sitting across from you on the bus who have no issue with gratuitous PDA. You can think about instances of non-romantic love in your own life (if your life has been fortunate enough to include it), add a patina of lust and come up with a proxy for the feeling that you’re longing to experience firsthand. And if someone tells you that you’ll know love when you feel it, well, you’re inclined to take them at their word because you have no doubt about the veracity of love itself. Not so with the unnamed emotional salve that Gen Yers of a certain stripe are fixated upon. Think of it as heroin addicts chasing the dragon, except we have no previous experience of the perfect high and no tangible proof  that it exists (after all, your happy isn’t my happy). But we’ve been told not only is it awesome,  it’s the answer to all our problems. So we soldier on and with a surprising amount of blind faith for such a supposedly cynical and jaded generation. But sooner or later, we get tired of seeking and never finding. I  imagine it’s akin, on a small scale, to the weariness of living through decades of Cold War nuclear posturing or spending your entire life on the edge of your seat waiting for The Rapture to finally kick off. Eventually, to conserve emotional and mental energy, you just go numb. That’s what happened to the friends I mentioned and that’s what’s happening to so many of us, even if we’re loath to publicly admit to such unflattering apathy and disinterest. We’re burned out and all of the good intentions, platitudes and woulda/coulda/shouldas in the world have lost their potency. Become a barista? Have a baby? Pop the cork on another bottle of cheap wine and commiserate? Yeah, the person who comes up with definitive means of getting our generational mojo back is gonna make a mint. And then, if they’re one of us,  probably still feel empty and lacking while rolling around on their pile of hundred dollar bills. I jest. Maybe.

    Long-term wanting is taxing enough when there’s a prize for you to fix your eye on.  But without a concrete goal such as saving $40 000 for a down payment, finishing med school or training for a triathlon, it becomes absolutely exhausting if you can’t even put your finger on what it is you want (The Victorians were off the mark; pining ain’t all it’s cracked up to be). There’s just that damn, never-ending rainbow overhead. It seems to take up the entire sky and no matter how long or far you walk, you never seem to get any closer to the end and even if you did reach it, you’ve started to doubt you’d even recognize it as such, not to mention actually setting eyes upon the mythic pot of gold. And yeah, your feet are really starting to hurt, you know?

    *I also saw a newspaper ad recruiting people for a medical study. The criterion was that you had stopped caring about or being interested in your life, but were not actually suffering from diagnosed depression. Yes, it made me giggle.