Floating: The other side of 20-somethings
Posted on 27. Aug, 2010 by Anupa in modern relationships, Pop Culture
Party and bullshit: just a day in the life
Naively, I read through that NYT piece about my socio-cultural generation and our seemingly preternatural ability to avoid ‘real life’ responsibility and huffed a sigh of relief (and forwarded it on to a few friends). Yes, I thought. Finally, my suffering is legit. But, my much wiser, more astute friends and peers didn’t cop the cop out as readily as I did. And most of them are that 20-something the article listed off; listless, responsibility-free, unemployed but not uninspired. Some of them are more than that, working the kind of jobs and doing the kind of things that people over a certain age just don’t understand and pretty much anyone our age is jealous of.
But what about the rest of us. What about people like me?
This might seem like the story of a quitter, but it’s more about floating. We (“20-somethings”) all start out floating, buoyed by public school-mandated prospects of limitless, bountiful dreams. Our parents, whether they’ve struggled to provide, boosting with nothing but a grade school education, or head up bougey white-collar operations, let us float on benevolently—or, as some might argue, irresponsibly. Even if you start working from the youngest age the government allows, running amok in an amusement park with a billion other babes guised as employees for the minimum-est of wages, you’re still floating. Living in your parent’s house, being your parent’s kid, watching TV in a bedroom equipped with its own phone line with call waiting. That doesn’t mean you don’t learn things and mature, and I’m not saying you don’t grow up, but the idea of settling for something—job, marriage, children—seems far off and vague.
I know a few people between 19 and 30. Lots of them are in graduate schools around the world, adult-aged with freshmen lives and real world problems. I know another who got fired from a white-collar gig and has coasted mysteriously for three plus months on either savings or her parents’ paychecks; she doesn’t like to talk about money. A guy I dated, probably the least conventional in terms of lacking the nuclear family stability circle of my circle, has spent the past year jobless and dream-driven (whether the dream is viable is another question the 20-something rarely faces). Then there’s my med school pal on the straight path, who cried to me about marriageability four years ago between undergrad and post-grad and is on-plan with an engagement right now.
And here I am 10 years on from that theme park gig, a 25-year-old journalism grad armed with a proverbial quarter-life crisis and two years experience as cheap labour with a handful of clippings. I just quit. You’d think I’d be stuck off the realness; freaked out, at least a little, by the every day bullshit of bills and rent. Enough to settle down, like some of my back-home friends who either ditched the dream to follow in the supposedly tranquil suburban shadows of their parents, or who have remained motivated but fell in love. That’s a major nein (but were I seriously enamored, maybe it’d be different? Still, I’m saying, NEIN.) Instead I quit and reveled in my quittingness and booked flights and planned champagne-filled dinners and basically fucking decided to keep on floating.
But here’s why it’s the other side of the 20-something: because I’m not directionless or aimless and maybe I do consider myself a victim of both “the times” and the economy and some other not-getting-into-it socio-economic stuff, yet still, that doesn’t make me some kind of post-juvenile vagrant. I worked very hard, doing the job of three people as just one person, toiling in an industry that is ossifying before our eyes, all while dreaming my definitive 20-something dream of just being able to write. Yes, my parents helped me out here and there, because as a single, childless 20-something, I need beer money and HBO to keep going under at-times soulless conditions. And, as a fair weather 20-something I am reveling and fêting quittage because it took me straight up eight fucking months to find a new job. Trying. This is where the New York Times condescendingly posits that my version of trying doesn’t involve the painstakingly type-written letters and traipsing around in heinous polyester pantsuits of my parents’ age. Always trying to act like the Internet just doesn’t exist, those pure-hearted, shiny-cheeked journalists.
A lot can be said that’s probably true about what it means to be in your 20s in 2010, but all this brings to mind now—post-guidance from aforementioned enlightened friends—is a phrase I never thought I’d hear myself actually saying in truth, “Don’t hate.” We’re just the effects, living out the cultural, economic and familial relationships, of the causes, and we’re self-focused because we can be and because we’ve figured out—unmarried and childless in our 20s—that it’s best to just “do you.” And even though we pursue graduate degrees like they’re golden tickets and title ourselves “blogger slash something” in our Twitter profiles and appear to be floating through life, we’re just on our backs, drifting between the wreckage, keeping our eyes on the stars instead.
Jeff Lewis
Aug 27th, 2010
Funny how so many of us under-30s got so very up-in-arms about that NY Times piece. Eight thousand words when it could have been summed up as “kids these days.”
Still, I’m not sure I agree with your characterization of our generation, perennially stuck “on our backs, drifting between the wreckage” of an economy turned ugly. Surely we wield more agency over our individual circumstances than all that.
Yeah, yesterday’s media empires are crumbling, and there’s nothing sweet about unpaid internships and writing for an endless spate of trade pubs, but opportunities exist. Of course, I’m in Edmonton, not Toronto.
Thing is, I work with a staff of mid-20- to 30-something journos, and nearly every one of us has passed through T-dot at one stage or another, dead set on landing a gig at the Globe, the Walrus or Toronto Life. We laugh about our singular ambition over beers, happy to be employed doing some semblance of what we’re trained to do.
It took moving away from southern Ontario and into the wiles of northern Alberta for me to realize two things: a) journalism is, always has been and always will be a shitty, low-wage profession (one that I mysteriously cling to) and b) you can learn a lot from those senior journalists – the “pure-hearted, shiny-cheeked” lot you refer to.
Keep Hustlin’!
Anupa
Aug 29th, 2010
Hey Jeff!! Hope you and Lauren are doing good out West! I totally agree with a lot of what you said. I’m not jaded about journalism as a profession, just some of the old guard reticence to adapt to the digital world. And I suppose the wage woes are more specific to the position I just left, where I was being asked to do more than one person should be doing. This is definitely not a “eff journalism” rant, because I love it and wish it could sustain me in the way I need.
Maybe I didn’t articulate clearly what I meant by: “on our backs, drifting between the wreckage.” I meant it more as an analogy for “our generation” being dream-focused, despite the obstacles we may/may not face. It looks like we’re coasting through life unaware, but we’ve just got our eyes on the prize.