I’ve hated being a Millennial ever since the stupid avocado toast days. I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike of profiling generations, I know everyone is probably getting tired of me ranting about it. I see it as useful for knowing what environment people have likely grown up in and that’s about it. It’s very obviously often weaponised as a way to divide people and I’ve always tried to ignore the discourse (despite probably annoying you all by ranting about it constantly in a “Jesus Dort just get off the internet and go get some help” kind of way)
But now Millennials are getting older and it feel like we’re only getting more and more hate. We’re being remembered by everyone, young and old, as failures who accomplished nothing. Nothing we did mattered, and nothing we do now will ever be acknowledged as ours because in the eyes of society our time is over. It feels like the world is like “Oh thank god those losers don’t matter any more, see how much better at life the next generation is? Zoomers are directing Hollywood hits at age 20!” like I want to be happy for them but at the same time I can’t help but feel like when my generation did/does shit like that no one went/goes “Wow! Look at what Millennials accomplished!” I feel like the only time anyone ever spoke/speaks about us is to complain about how much we suck. Anything good we do/did gets ignored and only our flaws ever get acknowledged.
It really gets me down for some reason, maybe it’s RSD, a mid-life crisis, maybe I’m just weak, who knows? I feel like we weren’t given the chances others were and given yet we’re judged for it like it was our fault.
Anyway this is the last I’ll ever say about it because it’s embarrassing to be whining like a victim in my 30s and this site isn’t a mental health service. I just feel like I’m part of a generation whose life is over before it got a chance to begin and I never got a say in it. Like nothing I do now matters.
Posting this in the neurodiverse comm because I’m pretty sure my feelings are the result of… something, whether it’s the aforementioned RSD from my AuDHD, some kind of trauma or just middle age around the corner making me existential, I don’t know. Maybe all three.
Fully understand if mods decide to delete this for being too much
Here’s how I dealt with it:
I was going to school for a fancy professional career, was losing steam from mental issues and also looking at the publish-or-perish, hierarchical reality of the sector. Dropped out of college and lived on a shoestring for a few years, during which time I found the local anarchists, read a bunch of anarchist and Marxist theory and history. Got into gardening with anarchist friends and did all my own cooking from scratch, mended clothes, got used to secondhand stuff, living with roommates, surviving on a very low baseline in a low-cost-of-living city.
Finally entered the workforce and ended up doing a bunch of different things, but they all were jobs where I could tangibly see the result of what I’d done. Agriculture, food service, logistics. Especially at the mom-and-pop businesses, I was able to look at the numbers and figure out exactly how much labor was going in and how much revenue was generated. It felt like demystifying the division of labor, and breaking through the alienation just a tiny bit, to see customers buying what I made (or hauled and repackaged). Along the way I made it into multiple radical networks, and have a few business models for skipping unionization entirely and jumping straight to workers’ co-ops or even a business that’s run by and for a commune.
Working part-time at minimum wage, I was able to get by. Working full-time, I am able to save up faster than I would have thought plausible for a decade, even while harboring people who are not fully on their feet. I am maybe 5 years from being able to retire with a modest but self-contained and ecologically friendly lifestyle, plus about 3 more years for each dependent I accumulate If I wanted to go live on a rural commune, I could just do that.
For a while I was a failson. But now I can say how much value I’ve created, and I’ve worked at least 10 jobs in several different sectors, and I’ve lived with dozens of different people. Most people can’t draw a clear reasoned line to a number of what they objectively contribute to the economy. In addition to being knowledgeable of a whole bunch of subjects (math, physical sciences, psychology, geography, history) at a collegiate level, Boomers cannot touch me. The most that someone can do is say they make a higher number of dollarinos than I do.
We’re in a pivotal point in human history, and I feel like I’ve gotten all the right opportunities to pursue meaning and paradigm shifts instead of empty affluence. And if anyone tries to rub affluence in my face I can scoff at it.