Generation Meh

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  • Unsolicited: A Story In Zero Acts

    I am trying not to be meddlesome. Truly, I am. It is difficult and I’ve probably overstepped already. Me, my magic wand and the horse I rode in on. I am always digging in people’s heads. Compiling dossiers of facts and feelings that I rifle through and mentally update each time we talk. Climbing all over you like you’re a jungle gym. Working my emotional alchemy to come up with what I feel is just the right elixir to heal what ails. Maybe I tell you what I’ve figured out and maybe I don’t.

    It’s probably better if I don’t.

    I repeat my mantra about never adopting strays. I remind myself that I’m not in the market for interpersonal fixer-upper projects. And yet, a few words would solve this. If you thought about it like that. But what if you just… Hold still while I fix your collar. I bite my tongue. The impulse to advise, to cheerlead, to tinker, to grab you by the shoulders and tell you about the whole damn world full of Technicolor potential and tie-dyed possibility and don’t you want to LIVE already? comes from a good place, but it isn’t my place. Not these days. I remind myself that no one here knows about my secret life of internet prescriptivism. Nobody asks, maybe nobody even wonders. And, of course, I don’t volunteer, because there’s no way to tell it that doesn’t start with, “Once upon a time, I was someone neat…”

    Instead, I just watch out of the corner of my eye and when you turn away, I tuck my little file back in the drawer until next time.

  • Once Upon A Time

    I was a lousy freelancer.

    At least in spirit.

    I can really only write well when it comes from the gut, when I feel something for the words and what they represent. The rest always felt, at best, slightly whorish and, at worst, like donating blood that would never be transfused. No wonder I spent so much of 2010 sleepless.

    It’s not that I am a Gen Y expert or envisioned a bright career as a youth culture talking head (what would happen when I found my first gray hair or wrinkle?), it was just what was on my mind at the time, so I wrote about it. And wrote about it some more. And kept writing about it until other stuff intruded and took over my thoughts until there was no room left for the Millennials.

    I want to tell stories again. Not the stories I’ve been telling all along, but new ones. Ones I’m living or feeling or even pretend ones I’m thinking up on my morning commute while listening to Gillian Welch. Stories that don’t always have an object lesson, a point, a punchline. Stories that I’m working out on the page as I write. Those kind of stories. That’s what’s on the menu these days. It seems disingenuous to offer up anything else, really. And I am okay with this.

  • Make A Wish

    Coworker’s birthday at a local pub. I am overdressed. Low-key by city standards, but too done-up for here. Enough so that I’m offered a gin and tonic while everyone else at the table has beer. I decline. We talk work and foreign language pronunciations and how we came to be here. Either you were born here and you’re gonna die here or you needed a job. Those are really your only choices. I feel like I have to justify my reasoning. It’s not permanent. It just happened. Yeah, I miss X, Y and god yes, Z (where X, Y and Z could be any combination of people, amenities or foods that are now a million miles away). I say it with a smile, aware of the thin line between displaced ingenue and graceless snob.

    Coworker decides we should all switch places so the transplants and locals can mingle. We gamely oblige, simply shifting down a seat and taking our conversations with us. He seems satisfied. I snag a strawberry from the top of the birthday cake as I button up my coat for the long walk to the car. Coworker thanks me for being there. On Monday, he will apologize for the tipsy slip of the tongue where he called me his wife. I will laugh it off and tell him that his subconscious recognizes that, in this context, I am one hell of a catch. And I will know that my graceless snob is showing again.

  • The Sporting Life

    A Friday night fete. I end up trapped at the kitchen table with new colleagues who want to get philosophical and chummy. Very chummy. I am sober. Very sober. And I am the only woman left. Things get awkward. I wait until a broken wine glass provides a convenient distraction and I run out the door, beelining for my car. I arrive home still wearing a whistle around my neck. I am not comfortable without at least one wingman, I know this. And yet, I pushed it.

    That’s what a good sport would do.

    On Sunday, I go snowshoeing for the first time. Snowshoeing across a frozen lake, to be exact. The wind is cold and it steals my breath and makes my good ear hurt. I huff and puff to keep pace. I cringe at each groan beneath my feet.  I don’t fear much, but I fear ice. Slipping, falling, breaking into brittle little pieces.  And yet, I pushed it.

    That’s what a good sport would do.

  • Trend Spotting: The So Over It Edition

    I suppose I should come right out and announce the conclusion that I’ve been slowly drawing (but in pencil so I can erase it if need be) in my head for that last couple of months – this generational analysis thing is so dead. The Gen Y/Millennial media monopolization and fascination is the deadest horse that ever died. It’s old, it’s stale, it’s played out and anything that was worth saying, or dissecting or counterpointing has already been said, dissected and counterpointed.  There’s only so much rehashing, repurposing, reimagining you can do before you’d happily pay yourself and everyone else to STFU about the topic forever and ever amen.

    And I’m not just saying this because I feel as if I’m 105 lately. No, I’m just tired of reading, responding to, writing about the same tired things and looking at and interpreting things through the same purgatorial young adults lens. Adult being the key word here. We’re all adults, or on our way to being them. Maybe “adult” doesn’t look the same as it did 20 or 30 years ago or will look 20 or 30 years hence, but really, who cares? Do you really, truly care about isolating the root causes of general values trends among your peers? What do you plan to do with that knowledge? Will it help you get a job? Sleep better at night? Whiten your teeth? No. It’s static. Interesting static by times, but at the micro-level of you and I as individuals getting through a day at a time, it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot of anything and should be treated accordingly. I feel the same way about the social media industry and all of its attendant statistics and self-aggrandizing. Who cares? Who needs to care? Only people who make their money from these statistics and self-aggrandizing. Did people pay this much attention to the advent and evolution of the microwave?

    We unnecessarily complicate things a lot of the time, give them more complexity, more shades of gray  than they actually have or need to have. Maybe it makes us feel important as we ponder and mull or when we dither, when we tell ourselves things are much too convoluted to permit a snap judgment or rushed choice.

    I think this is one of those times and the discussion of Gen Y/Millennial culture is one of those things.

    It’s done, folks.  I expect someone or some outlet with clout to make the very same announcement (heavy on the blasé) in a few month, at which time I’ll obviously be ready with the appropriate I Told You So.

  • Do You Solemnly Swear?

    Friday Philosophizing time again! I ask open-ended questions. You answer. There will be tea, but not Earl Grey because that’s just wrong.

    Is there a difference between honesty and transparency?


    Can you be honest without being fully transparent? If what you’re telling is the truth, does it matter if it’s not the whole truth? Do you “owe” (as an individual) and do we expect (as an audience) full disclosure? Is self-editing or self-censorship dishonest or simply canny?

    Make your case in the comments.

  • Psst…

    New piece up over at Thought Catalog. In this one, I turn my Margaret Mead gaze on my parents’  relationship vocab.

    P.S. to the Psst… I’m also thinking of starting a new essay series/project-y thing re: community, communications and identity in the post-internet world. Gimme a shout if you’re intrigued and want to kick around the concept.

  • The Sad Truth About Subtext

    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.

    Aside from treasure maps and ransom notes, there are few communications worth parsing for hidden/secret meanings. Doesn’t stop us from reading into everything from our doctor’s raised eyebrow (Does he think I need to lose weight?) to a coworker’s “good luck” wish before a big presentation (Was that sarcastic?) to the ellipses at the end of someone’s Facebook status update, though. We’ve got it into our collective head that face value isn’t good enough, isn’t true enough. There has to be more. What about decoding body language? Sussing out subtext behind straightforward statements? Parsing the potentially passive-aggressive? If what we’re seeing or hearing doesn’t match up with the story we tell ourselves about ourselves and others, we just dig a little deeper, squint a little harder until the pieces fit together in a way that works for us. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO TELL ME BY NOT TELLING ME?

    The truth? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what the precise reason why he hasn’t called you back is, only that he didn’t and that tells you all you need to know about him.  And you’ll probably never know why you didn’t get an interview for your dream job. Tough luck, but that’s the reality of job hunting, alas. What matters is that you stop spending your mental energy filling in the blanks, putting words in people’s mouths and intentions in their heads. Creating elaborately second-guessed narratives is exhausting and their veracity is nigh on unprovable. And no one’s gonna pay you J.K. Rowling level dough to torture yourself by reading between the lines of your crush’s three sentence text or stressing over whether your kickboxing instructor’s smirk was a silent judgment on your lack of fitness.

    Sometimes, when literal is all you get, it’s also all you need.

  • Stemming The I’m Sorry Tide

    Chicago got it wrong; it isn’t hard to say I’m sorry, it’s easy, too easy even. We’re now conditioned to apologize by instinct. Sorry, wrong number. Oops, sorry for stepping on your foot, for not hitting the elevator button in time, for loitering in the cereal aisle when you were trying to reach a box of Cocoa Puffs. Reflexive blurts of no more weight or significance than asking, “How’s it going?” and not stopping long enough to hear the answer (because you’re not even expecting one). You get the picture. Conversations sans consequence, annoying in their obsequiousness.


    But what about a sincere sorry? How often have you received a genuine apology for a major league hurt? If you’re like me, it’s a very rare occurrence. Sorry for being late/for canceling that meeting/for shrinking your sweater in the dryer. Those don’t count. What about sorry for bullying you and making your life hell in ninth grade? For cheating on you with your roommate? For not calling for three weeks after your dad died because I didn’t know what to say? These are the kind of apologies that count and that we rarely receive. It’s much easier to apologize for violating social niceties than for violating someone’s trust in you. It’s uncomfortable to admit that your behavior, your decisions, you yourself mattered enough in someone else’s scheme of things to cause that kind of hurt, to wield that kind of power. Much easier to assume that they got over it, it wasn’t such a big deal, that’s life. Whatever lets you sleep at night, I suppose.

    It’s about time we reversed our apology M.O., IMO. Save your sorry (and your breath) for stuff that matters and change the petty behavior (lateness, sarcasm, an inability to read fabric labels when doing laundry) that keeps you offering reflexive apologies. Or better yet, skip the sorry entirely and simply start making the necessary amends to fix your big ticket missteps. Instead of stewing over the words to use, whether the statute of limitations has expired on breaking the shamed silence or what reaction you’ll receive, do what you’ve always known needs to be done to settle your emotional accounts.

  • Money Matters And Don’t You Forget It

    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.

    Money trumps self-actualization and anyone who tells you otherwise obviously has no trouble paying their bills or can no longer remember a time when they did. It’s hard to save the world while living under a bridge or being consumed with anxiety about whether the phone will ever ring for another job interview. And I see damn few guru/thought leader types who are willing to acknowledge that you can’t pay this month’s rent with the prosperity doctrine.

    Photo by emdot

    Prioritizing your need for a stable income and opting for a  practical (vs.  blissed-out/awesometastic/epic) career choice because you know that it won’t leave you living paycheck-to-paycheck until your government pension kicks in doesn’t make you an unevolved, money-grubbing wage slave, it makes you pragmatic and self-interested. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that. No shame in seeing the game for what it is.  No one else has to walk in your shoes or pay off your line of credit. You do what you have to do to get by and then you do what you want to do with the leftover energy and money. But it’s hard to think about that until there actually is leftover energy and money.

    Don’t fall into the myopically classist* rabbit hole of berating yourself for “safe” and/or necessary choices that seem to run counter to personal growth truths. Money (and not just the purportedly easy kind that comes from shilling  your essence to online suckers) matters and it matters most when you don’t have enough to go around.

    *Don’t you doubt for a damn second that the language and philosophy of self improvement and personal growth absolutely reeks with class privilege.