Post No. 1,000: Occupy adulthood

This is a momentous blog post. For one thing, it's the season of my birthday -- I'll be 27 on Monday. Imagine that. Before you know it, I'll be ... 28.

For another thing, this is my 1,000th post here on GBBM. I don't know if I'd say that I, "never thought I'd see the day," but I can say that when I started this project in 2007, I didn't really know what to make of it. A blog? What's a blog? Will people read it? (there was a time when I cared if people read it) OK, whatever, I'll do it. Four years later, I'm still not really sure what this is all about. The difference, though, is that these days I'm more OK with not knowing, more secure in the knowledge that it's all going someplace -- even if I don't know where that place is quite yet.

1,000 is a fairly arbitrary number, and therefore feels like a potentially odd time for introspection. But, we're a people who love arbitrary events -- Why is Jan. 1 on the start of a new year, anyway? Couldn't the Earth's 365-day trip around the sun begin or end on any day of our choosing? Why is an 18 year old better equipped to vote than a 17 year old? -- and it's a nice, round number.

So, I got to thinking about everything that's happened to me during these thousand posts. There are the obvious things: I got a job, moved out of my parents' house, got another job, got another job, lost a job, got another job, moved to a new state. Some things that hurt: Money woes, crashes, hangovers, broken hearts (mine or hers). And the things that get taken for granted: haircuts (not enough), oil changes (too many), flat tires (on my bike, not my car), grocery shopping, cooking, taking out the trash (when stench was powerful enough to overcome laziness).

But, through it all, there was a general arc of a life changing (mine). I was reading, recently, a story in the Washingtonian about twentysomthings (oh, BTW, that's one word now, haven't you heard?), which painted us as an entitled, ungrateful, self-important lot who turn up their noses at jobs they deem below them. Yeah, I guess that's about right.

I still have friends (only a few, but still too many) who live with their parents, or otherwise accept help from home. Some have yet to cut a rent check that bears their own name. Others don't know their way around the grocery store (hint, the produce is almost always to your right as you walk in, meat case along the back wall). If I've accomplished nothing since moving back to Saratoga Springs to take a low-paying ($21,000, if you're curious) job at a newspaper, at least I've grown out from under my parent's wings.

No, fuck that. I've accomplished much more than just writing rent checks. According to that Washingtonian article, I've achieved what few in my generation have: I settled for a low-paying gig, worked my ass off and thanked my editors for (almost) every assignment, no matter how stupid, and was eventually rewarded with a job that I find intellectually satisfying and challenging. I wonder what I'd be doing now, had I passed on that newspapers' offer, and had instead chosen to continue living in Brooklyn, arguing with my parents about dirty dishes and selling sneakers. It's hard to say, but I'm going to guess that I wouldn't be where I am now.

Here's what I'm trying to get at: Social media, an upbringing that promised us the world and the lush '90s has separated many of my peers and I from our parents in one crucial way: Past generations did. They didn't waste years thinking about whether or not they were making the absolute right decision, or agonize about whether or not their job was as fulfilling as their college professors had promised, they just chose a path, and went for it. If it worked out, great. If not, they figured something else out. Can we expect more than past generations? Well, we can expect whatever we want, doesn't mean it's going to happen.

A good friend once observed that I had a very pragmatic view of relationships ("Well, I liked her a lot, but it wasn't going to work out in the long term, so, it sort of felt like there was no point, you know?"), and I've come to realize that my pragmatism is not limited to my view of romantic situations. But frankly, I think a bit of pragmatism can do everyone some good now and then.

Should we lower our expectations? Maybe. Should we be pragmatic about our choices? Yes. It's great to have goals, and it's admirable to try to achieve those goals. But what worries me is seeing lots of my peers still searching for jobs that aren't going to materialize, and putting the rest of their lives on hold in the meantime. just. do. something.

I referenced the ongoing "#Occupy" protests in the headline of this blog, mostly because the one thing I know about social media is that it's good to reference terms in your headline that are likely to garner (even accidental) hits on Google. But, I also had a sincere point to make about those protests. Here it is: There are a lot of people (many from my generation) participating in those sleep-ins, or whatever they are. I've said to anyone who's asked my opinion (like, two people), that I think the protesters need to organize themselves and come up with a coherent message and demands. As it stands now, all they're doing is bad math (99 percent? Please.), and moving away from pragmatism. They feel marginalized, but they're also not doing any thing to change their position -- not in their own lives, and not in the larger sense of the alleged 99-percent's alleged struggle with the alleged 1-percent. Instead of doing something, they're sitting around complaining about things they don't like -- and they can't even agree on what those things are. Typical, apparently, of my generation.

Remember the Civil Rights movement? They accomplished something. How'd they do it? Well, for one thing, they had a pretty damn good sense of what they wanted. It wasn't therichpeople'smoney/organicfood/domesticjobs/revisedimmigrationlaws/mycar'sbrokenandsomeone'sgottafixit. It was equal rights. Done. Simple. Oh, and a charismatic leader didn't hurt anything either. But our generation wouldn't know about that. I don't know about other institutions, but at my liberal arts school, all that was need to effect change was a few dozen students signing a petition about some trifling grievance. Unfortunately, that's not how it works in the real world -- but my peers must have skipped the lecture that day.

God damn, I did not realize how angry I was at so many of my peers! Thankfully, all hope is not lost. For every acquaintance I have living with their parents, there are several more out in the world doing things -- and many of them (pragmatic or not) have found things to do that fulfill them. Hell, it even appears that my brother will get a job some time in the next two or three months. Knowing, despite evidence to the contrary, that there are people in my generation who "do" makes me hopeful that we'll find a way to stop Facebook from taking over the world, and then maybe address our real problems in a meaningful way. We don't need to occupy Wall Street -- we need to occupy our lives to the fullest extent possible.

(Here's to one thousand more!)