Is a age that is both full of, and devoid of opportunities. I feel like being a adult is just lying about how much you have your shit together to people who also lie about having their shit together. After we got out of college, we are just going to sit in front of a computer like the generations before us for the rest of our life, with the only difference of be paided less then them. I don’t want to be like this. I want my life to be more then this. I want to go out explore and change the world. When we gen z first comes to high school the world seems full of opportunities, we imagine us achieving great things, but not one of us could have imagined the entire generation having a mid-life crisis at the age of 18.
To all the Gen Z, and in the future, Gen Alpha. Welcome to the 2020s, welcome to late stage captalism.
I’m going to let you in on some insight from a 40-something millenial:
It starts off that way a bit, and you’re expected to at least put forward the impression you have your shit together before you do. But then the pretending gets easier and easier until you realize you’re just paying your bills, getting your laundry done, and doing what you need to do while feeling like you’re failing at the new, added responsibility in your life (like big career changes, kids, projects taken on, kids, taking care of family or friends, more kids). But that’s with anything new you take on. If you aren’t struggling at least a little, you’re not growing.
If you choose that. I can’t speak to the pay, because y’all are getting fucked… so far. I’ll speak more on that in a second, but I was the store manager of a restaurant for a few years before moving to New York from Seattle on a whim, worked customer service at a phone center for a cable company, and then joined the Coast Guard in my mid-to-late 20s, and drove boats until going into aviation and flying in helicopters, living in various places throughout the country, saving a few lives, flying in really cool places, and when I retire I can go do something else. People who stay in a job behind a desk their whole work life either love that job or are complacent in it. You are absolutely not chained to it.
And as for the shitty pay and everything, what I have seen of the Gen Z folks that have come through the Coast Guard is that they advocate for themselves and get things that we millenials are embarrassed to hear requested, much less think to ask for ourselves. And look to all the labor movements going on to push back at those pay drops. Keep the momentum, keep up the fight, don’t get complacent like my generation or Gen X.
That’s not a mid-life crisis, that’s just the normal fear of entering the world for real, and it’s been that way for a long, long time. The crises come when you start feeling how little time you have (quarter-life realization you just don’t have enough lifespan to do everything you hope to do, mid-life realization of how little time you really have). Your thing is simply the fear of embarking into the unknown, and your doomscrolling has made your future look bleak. Put the phone down. Take opportunities when you can. Enjoy what you can out of life.
The whole thing is daunting, I totally get it. But going in with the approach you have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.