Talkin Bout My Generation

I've been mulling over this whole state of affairs for a while. Not in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown sense of the world as I have in the past. But in the how the heck am I going to get a job!? ("call the recruiters" Yes Dad, thank you.), where am I going to live? What will my life be like post-graduation????

It used to be that you'd get an internship, if you did a good job and they liked you, they'd hire you when you graduate. You'd advance, save up for a down payment on a house, get a nicer car, etc., But now no one is in a position to hire, irregardless of how much they like you and we are stalled in terms of advancing up the prosperity ladder at a steady clip.

While this makes me rather upset, I'm more upset about all of the squandered potential that is occurring. I was at a birthday party for a fellow planner last week and another planner friend was talking about how he was applying for a job at Chase. The bank.

In the meantime, time continues on and we all get a little older and have to make our own concessions.

To cite one of my all-time favorite poems, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

I am ever-curious about the lifestyle habits of my peers and what does it say about our values?

As Scott Doyon noted in his post, "Settle Down Now, Is Community the New Frontier for Generation X?" March 4, 2011 "the youngest members [of Generation X] are now turning 30"

http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/settle-down-now-is-community-the-new-frontier-for-generation-x/

Ten years ago, "settling down" would mean getting married, having kids, and often moving out to the burbs where the schools are "better." But recent studies have shown that people are getting married later than (some of) their parents. And the more education you pursue the longer it takes you to walk down the aisle. Not that they make the actual aisle longer, statistically those who pursue advanced degrees tend to marry later than their peers. Add that to the fact that having kids is an expensive undertaking and frankly rather "conventional" and an act that can be put off without too much repercussions in this age of fertility drugs, surrogates, and adoption.

But in non familial ways I have batting around the concept of Doyon calls, "the desire to sidestep authority in pursuit of a more appealing alternate system of their own creation. . . our instinct still tell us to sidestep power, to make things work on our own terms instead, . . ."

Doyon goes off on a different path of thought than the one that I am thinking. I am considering the potential for collectively pooling our resources, living with less, freecycling, and admitting our dependence on one another.

The last part of the above quote ends in "and nowhere is this [sidestepping the current system] more evident than in the rise of localism"

I'd talked earlier about the rise in "collaborative consumption" on my post "Sharing is Caring" on February 22nd, 2011. But I've been thinking about how would it work to live in a post-millennial commune, if you will. There is a ton of cheap real estate in underserved areas, such as Oakland, California, Detroit, or Hartford, Connecticut. How awesome would it be to hang out with my friends from planning school and form a loosely bound consulting agency while striving to fix the world's problems?

This would work, if it were say, 1970, and we weren't bound by our student loans (thanks inflation!) Ruth Reichel is one of my favorite authors/memoirists. And in her first memoir, Tender at the Bone she recounted her life in late 1960s/early 1970s Berkeley, CA where she lived in a huge house with a bunch of people in her early adulthood. It'd also be nice to be guaranteed a little private/personal time from my housemates so that if one wanted to bring a beau over, have family spend the night, just have a little peace and quiet one could get it and also give to others.

It's a lovely dream, but I'm not entirely sure that it can take root in reality.

As I try to make sense of an ever-changing world I leave you with a link to the recording of King George VI's , which was featured in the Oscar-winning (!) the King's Speech. Even though the quality is a little scratchy, the message still has the power to reverberate in the soul. Especially when you know the context in which this man spoke out against the darkness that threatened to engulf his nation (ie Hitler's march across Europe)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhFW_auT20

Sharing is Caring

Although Malcolm McDowell is probably already writing about this as I type, I have been really interested in the concept of "sharing" lately. Not the way that children are taught how to share, but how we as human beings, old and young, can share our resources from our homes to our no-longer-needed resources (like extra bricks, discarded toys, etc.,) via sites such as Freecycle.com

When I was younger, and an aspiring hippie, I thought that it would be so cool to live in a commune with other people. As a child of a two-parent, one sibling family to live with a bunch of strangers from all walks of life seemed so exotic and cool.

Then I grew up and realized that I enjoy a little privacy, peace and quiet, and not staring at unrecognizable faces over the breakfast table, who had not been in the house when I went to bed. I did live in a semi-commune-like setting during my first year of grad school. It was an old 1920s-?, two story house that I shared with a revolving door of roommates- it was between two and five other girls on a given day. Plus two dogs and two cats, none of which were mine. It wasn't based on peace, love, and understanding- far from it and resource-sharing was a rare occasion. But it was "interesting."

A really cool example that didn't invoke personal frustration I found in an Amazon.com review of a book that does talk about this subject entitled What's Mine is Yours: the Rise of Collaborative Consumption by: Rachel Botsman by Kare Anderson from Sausalito, CA-

"One Saturday a friend who lives on Nob Hill in S.F. drove a zipcar over to visit me in Sausalito. He was eager to tell me about his trip to Istanbul, paid for by renting out his spare bedroom. Earlier that morning, via a freecycle posting, a stranger picked up some clay pots I'd set out by my garage so he could make a deck garden. Our apparently different actions are, in fact, part of a trend that Roos Rogers and Rachel Botsman dub collaborative consumption in their book, What's Mine is Yours."

And no Amazon (still!) doesn't give me a kickback every time I mention them. :(

The topic of sharing was also the focal point of an interview Planetizen (again, no kickbacks) conducted with a one Mr. Jay Walljasper

http://www.planetizen.com/node/48122

And for my pop culture reference of the day, house-swapping is one of the key plot devices in the Kate Winslet/Cameron Diaz/Jack Black/Jude Law movie, OK, chick-flick, the Holiday. Of course, as only Hollywood can, Kate Winslet lives in a charming English cottage and Cameron Diaz has a gorgeous home in the Hollywood Hills. But both are desperate for a chance of scenery and are more than happy to exchange one picturesque vista for another. And of course, find love in the process. But even Hollywood is clued in to resource sharing!

As the planet gets hotter and the economy continues to make a very slow recovery it will be interesting to see if we shift from "our greed is good" and "he who dies with the most toys wins" mentality to one based more on sharing and exchange. The days of borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor seem quaint at best, but who's to say that swapping houses could be the post-modern version? The future is unwritten.