21 Century Digital Boy

We are Trophy kids, we are Generation Y. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

Growing up I was always pushed to succeed: To have good grades, to be successful socially, to go to a good college and achieve something that most other people couldn’t. To have a career that is both profitable and be something I enjoy. To eventually have a amazing well paid job, and along the way find someone amazing fall in love with and get married. All this hopefully being accomplished by mid to late thirties, and then all that’s left is to live happily ever after. I was taught financial success first, then relationship success, then happily ever after. That was the plan anyway. But the bad economy has gotten in the way and has forced me to reevaluate this life plan that I and so many other 20-40 year old American’s developed.

The culture of today is not who you are but what you can provide. What is your profession? At least in Los Angeles it is almost guaranteed that within the first 3 minutes of meeting someone you will ask or be asked “So what do you do”. Upon answering you as well as the other person will then categorize one another on what you think that person should be like as well as what they can do to help you in your career/personal goals. So you’re an actor, that must mean you are a lively energetic outgoing person who works at a bar/restaurant to support yourself. Oh so you’re a teacher, that must mean you love kids and want a family of your own or you didn’t know what else to do so you choose teaching. Ect. We define people by their jobs. For the last 10 months I have been unemployed and I have felt like I have lost a large part of my identity. What is worse is that people just assume that because you are unemployed you’re to lazy/untalented/stupid… to actually find a job.

So with this stigma ingrained in my head I have excluded myself from society to some degree. I have not allowed myself to pursue many new relationships romantic or otherwise, and I haven’t really grown as a person. In fact I feel like this last year has been a year of stasis. Nothing has happened. It is as if I was in a coma and woke up a year later with nothing different only I was a year older. This year of unemployment aside though I’m not sure how much I’ve grown in the last 2 years since graduation college.

I graduated and then had a whole world of opportunity to wonder around aimlessly in. Fortunately I decided to push for a career in film and have focused so much of my attention to this that I don’t know if I’ve allowed myself to have any sort of life outside of this professional bubble. Even scarier I don’t know if its not that I haven’t allowed myself, but that I just don’t know how to have a life outside of the professional sphere. So I started thinking, if I had all my financial problems solved what then? If I could just skip ahead to happily ever after what would it be like? That’s when it hit me. I don’t know. Everything I’ve ever been taught has been about how to get to happily ever after, but no one has taught me what to do once I got there. Every movie ends at happily ever after. But then what happens? What I’m I supposed to do then?

After thinking about this I realized that my whole life has been about making sure I can succeed professionally to be able to support myself personally. But I since I left high school I’ve been growing up with less of personal identity and more of a professional identity. In College instead of asking what your job is people ask what your major is? Same thing. I don’t know if I know how to have relationships anymore that don’t have some professional affiliation. My best friends are all in some way business partners, and there are so very few people I know that are just friends. On the topic of romantic relationships I find myself being once again goal oriented. There are steps to take to finding the right person to fit the desired mold.. It’s almost like hiring someone. You can go through a few temps because they were attractive or provided something you needed temporarily, but most of the time I write off people because they do not fit all the qualifications that were clearly stated on the application. Happily ever after doesn’t have yellow teeth or crazy piercings, or a hatred for science fiction pieces. These small details stop potential meaningful relationships.

I am a product of a generation where success is measured in dollars, prestige, and appearances. A a testament to this just look at the amount of reality television shows focused on succeeding in a career: Top Chef, Top Model, Project Runway, The Apprentice, and so many more like them. Media and societal values have left my generation discontent with just being happy. We don’t know how to be truly happy being middle class, self dependent and relatively unnoticed by the world. We don’t know how to live if we don’t have something to be striving for. I don’t know if any of us can have a happily ever after because I don’t think we know how to be content. We keep ourselves so preoccupied that we’ve forgotten how to just enjoy life.