Talking Bout My Generation

  I read an article today that made me think about my generation. People in their mid to late twenties, and sometimes even early thirties, have had to put their lives on hold because of the economy. Fifty years ago, people were getting married at my age, buying houses, having babies, and starting that grown-up life before they had even fully grown up. Now, people my age are prolonging their youth, not entirely by choice but by situation. We are largely unemployed, homeless (meaning, without our own homes or apartments), and we are often broke, or damn near. [Thanks, Pete Townshend for a good lyric to put in my blog title ;) ]
    While I am the exception--I have a job, and as you read recently, I just hit the one-year mark (*hooray again*); I have an apartment that I am paying for all by myself; and I am extremely frugal and meticulous about my money, so I am never really broke. I may not have any cash on me sometimes, but I always have some money somewhere. On the other hand, I know that many people in my generation are broke, don't have their own place, and can't find a job. This was all my life before I found my job. I was unemployed for nine months after graduating college, I had moved back in with my dad, and even after I found work, I was still living with my mom for a few months until I could find an apartment.
    Moving forward in life has become overly complicated for people my age. I personally feel like I've hit the peak of adulthood. I don't have those same goals as firm, set-in-stone goals. If my life moves in a certain direction, yes, I might eventually want to buy a house. If my life moved in another direction, I might consider getting married. And if my life moved in a really different direction, several years from now, mind you, I also might consider kids. But right now, all of those possibilities seem so distant, not only financially, but in terms of my own maturity. I can't even imagine having any of those things right now. Five years from now though, who knows?
    Still, I can't help wondering about the other people my age who are broke and want to take those next steps in their lives and just can't. It's not pity, but frustration I feel about this whole thing. Why are we the ones denied what many of us consider to be rights of passage and a natural progression of life when our forebears had full access? Why did these people in control of the economy and the economic future of this country not think about how their decisions would affect their children? (Make no mistake, we are at about the age that those people's children would be--just because their kids have trust funds doesn't mean we're not part of the same generation.) Why, if they did think of our futures, did they not care enough to stop what they were doing?
    The Almighty Dollar wins again. Greed was good twenty five years ago, but the "free market" economy has spiraled out of control in such a way that the rich cling desperately to their wealth, while the poor, or the working and middle classes, must cling desperately to their next paychecks, knowing they may still have to rely on credit to meet all their financial responsibilities.
    I am, by no means, an economist--in fact, I have no idea how I even passed my high school economics class with an A because I don't remember a thing--but some of these things seem so simple that I can't understand how how people could have screwed it up so badly as to leave my generation in the position to try to move forward and clean up their mess without the means to do it.

Greed sucks. Unemployment sucks worse.

Have you been unemployed? How did you deal with it? 

What do you think about the economy and its effect on Generation Y 

(i.e. people born between about 1985 and 1995, if that)?

Discuss it in the comments below.

Vitamin D Deficiency

It has been ugly and cloudy and gray for more than a week now, and steadily gray and rainy for several days. It is damned depressing. It's dampening everyone's mood and morale. And it's causing drowsiness. This is in a place where we generally get over 300 days of sunshine in a year. (Granted that number includes days where the sun was only out for part of the day, but nonetheless.)
    It's the first week of full-time work, and the first two or three days were overwhelming because I was busy. I was not as busy today, and I was hoping to wrap things up so I could begin another project, i.e. larger task that would take me longer than 15 minutes, but I spent so much time going back and forth to people's offices for discussions and meetings and assigning tasks that I don't know where half my damn day went.
    I thought that my colleagues were keeping me from doing my job, because they're entertaining and fun to talk to--and for someone who hasn't consistently had friends to talk to in person for a long time, having people like that around is really comforting. But, as a matter of fact, it might be my bosses that are keeping me from doing my job now. They keep assigning one thing after another, and having meeting after meeting and training after training that it keeps me there, listening to what needs to be done, and not able to actually do any of it! I like to get stuff done. I get a little thrill every time I get to cross something off a list or check a box as complete. And I don't even mind having a long list as long it's not all due immediately. But if people keep telling me what to do and not giving me a chance to do it, it gets really frustrating. I want to do it. I really do. So what might be better is to just make a list. Write an email. Carrier pigeon. Whatever. Just quit making me go back and forth so much so I can sit down and actually get stuff done.

UPDATE: I had to edit out some of this for security reasons.

    Rant over. Apologies for getting a little off topic. I'm going to blame it on the shitty weather. But that's the majority of shareable information that's on my mind today, so I figured it might make for the most interesting read. But interesting is a sliding scale. It's interesting by comparison, not by default.

I get by with a little help from my friends.