Great piece - except how is mark zuckerberg a gen-Xer if he was born in 1984? I was born in 1980 and often get either tacked on as the tail end of gen X or the beginning of millennial, but I definitely definitely identify more with the Gen-X mentality and lack of visibility. I went to a great college (Mount Holyoke- still fighting to remain women-only ), and I can’t help but notice our class notes being sparse and many of us doing ok for ourselves but I and quite a few others are left wondering “what the hell happened?”. I blinked and now I’m 44 and watching our 90s grunge fashion cycle back around and bitterly wondering what the hell happened with the promises we were told growing up that as long as we went to a good college, everything would fall into place - we’d fulfill our potential and become world-changers.
Looks like I messed up that Zuckerberg thing. Ouch and thanks for the correction! Thanks for reading and commenting, too. The Gen X thing is a weird phenomenon. I hope we're not waiting to get older, because letting the older folks run the show is part of the problem. We need people who are going to live in the future stepping up to plan it!
One of the benefits of growing up poor/working class is that being comfortably in the upper middle class feels like a tremendous achievement. Also as a gay man being married with kids is more than I dared let myself imagine for years. And with my work I feel I make my mark on this world everyday. My life is not as flashy or expansive as those you mentioned above....but I am happy and that alone would seem to be a great success.
Great piece - except how is mark zuckerberg a gen-Xer if he was born in 1984? I was born in 1980 and often get either tacked on as the tail end of gen X or the beginning of millennial, but I definitely definitely identify more with the Gen-X mentality and lack of visibility. I went to a great college (Mount Holyoke- still fighting to remain women-only ), and I can’t help but notice our class notes being sparse and many of us doing ok for ourselves but I and quite a few others are left wondering “what the hell happened?”. I blinked and now I’m 44 and watching our 90s grunge fashion cycle back around and bitterly wondering what the hell happened with the promises we were told growing up that as long as we went to a good college, everything would fall into place - we’d fulfill our potential and become world-changers.
Looks like I messed up that Zuckerberg thing. Ouch and thanks for the correction! Thanks for reading and commenting, too. The Gen X thing is a weird phenomenon. I hope we're not waiting to get older, because letting the older folks run the show is part of the problem. We need people who are going to live in the future stepping up to plan it!
One of the benefits of growing up poor/working class is that being comfortably in the upper middle class feels like a tremendous achievement. Also as a gay man being married with kids is more than I dared let myself imagine for years. And with my work I feel I make my mark on this world everyday. My life is not as flashy or expansive as those you mentioned above....but I am happy and that alone would seem to be a great success.
And you should be happy. You do good stuff.
As do you...and you are doing exactly what you said you wanted to do. Another success!
But .... where is our Greta?