guest blog
i have successfully bossed a good friend (u.c. freak) to write an anonymus post, since my own blogging efforts have recently been deemed boring (since i got all happy and in LUV.) so enjoy the guest blog!"I never set out to be weird. It was always the other people who called me weird."
-- Frank Zappa, to The Baltimore Sun, October 12, 1986
I want to know what is up with generation X? Where have we gone? We were named so because we were the generation not defined. We weren’t the conservative 50s, civil rights, hippies, the coke addicts of the 80s, and the grunge of the 90s. Yet we were all those things. My mother was a 50s housewife in the 70s and early eighties. I defy anyone 35-ish to say they do not have a picture of themselves as a small child with plaid pants. I embraced Model UN and think globally, act locally. I loved grunge and would love for flannel pants as daywear to come back.
But we are still undefined. I am undefined. I look at others who have a passion in life and know exactly what they want. I do not. I always wonder what I will be when I grow up, and how much more growing will I have? I will be in menopause before I decide.
How many people have a degree, or any post-secondary education (love that term), and have a job in no way related? It just seems I am too wishy-washy. I really do not care what happens. As long as I can do nothing and relax. After what? Sitting at a job all day. My father used to work 14 hour days lifting and carrying heavy trays, while my mom stayed at home, cooking and cleaning and raising 4 kids (one of which was me, so she may get double credit for that). I am tired if I have to go to the store after work.
Has anyone else ever thought if there were a war and we had to start from scratch (magically, I am always a survivor in this train of thought, so stay close to me when it happens), could I make it? I cannot even comprehend no TV, so how could I hunt and gather? What about my daily vitamins and bottled water, let alone living outside. I have recently vowed (my yearly vow) to never again live in a house without central air. I don’t think I am the roughing it kind.
Oddly, sometimes I think the people who really know, who have clearly defined goals and ideas, are the people who have kids. I don’t think marriage really matters, but if you are a good parent, you really have to figure out how to give completely to another person, who for several years has no idea you were created for anything else, except their care and happiness. Maybe that is how to define yourself. To be completely removed from you.
Now, before Jen has a fit, I am not saying everyone needs kids. I can see where it may be better to end certain lines of breeding, but is there something fundamentally different after kids?
Sorry this is all over the place, but so am I. Peace. (-U.C. Freak 7/19/06)
Wow! That was an amazing encapsulation of our generation. Yes, I still think of myself as GenX even though the term has gone out of fashion. And I used to cry when my mom put those plaid pants on me. Just watching anything done by Sid & Marty Croft helps me understand why my peers and I are so off.
ReplyDeleteI'm running off to Canada (the book Generation X was written by a Canadian btw) to pursue my dream of becoming an English professor. But in true GenX fashion I question the dream every other day. I wonder if it's really what I want to do or just a holdover from my childhood goals, no longer valid. I also wonder if perhaps I'm not too perpetually tired to actually make the whole academic thing work. It's a demanding profession & I get exhausted just thinking about the grocery store. But I also think that we all have to do something, so why not that, since cubicles make me miserable.
My post-secondary education has, oddly enough, prepared me for the post-apocolypse though. I plan on establishing hegemonic control over a small band of survivors who will hunt and gather on my behalf while I fill their heads with philosophical nonsense of the afterlife. Not a bad plan by my calculations.
Excellent post U.C. Freak!
Veddy Good.
ReplyDeleteAs one who has kids, my decision to have my first child was just a leap of faith that I had something to offer to the next generation, not that I could or would mold him in my image but that I wanted to have a small smidge of fight left to preserve what I think is right and just by just planting my garden. Even if my son completely does a 180 from everything I hold dear, it still etablishes an opposite paradigm, yeah?
Everyone does not need kids. Maybe I don't. It's a delicate balance to give enough and not become a service robot, but like St. Lily of the Flowers or a monk there's a spiritual freeing that comes with a bit of self sacrifice now and then. There's something very touching just giving my daughter food and knowing I provided it and watching her enjoy it that goes to an almost primal evolutionary level.
Singles just get this in different ways, like volunteering or getting up to walk the dog when you rather wouldn't.
my mom put those plaid pants on me, with ponchos, til i was old enough to tell her to go to hell.
ReplyDeleteshe bought me bell bottoms from some lame ass garage sale, and i cried. nobody in 1980 was wearing those! i needed boot cut, dammit!
as far as gen-x, i think we're sort of a lost generation.....
and on that note, i need to go lay down and rest.
No wonder you get big red zits on your nose....cause your mean to Lady Elaine, oh I mean your mom....hahahaha
ReplyDeleteAnd let me remind you....you never wore anything you didn't want to...having a blog does not give you license to exaggerate the truth.
ReplyDeleteI feel certain that glittermom forced plaid bell bottoms and ponchos on glittergirl, much like my own mother forced them on me. But at least my mom had me in legwarmers by the '80s. Jeez. No wonder glittergirl is such a truth-exaggerating wreck.
ReplyDelete