Inconsequence is Looming: Quarterlife Crisis

For the past six years, I’ve been wanted. I’ve been courted, worshipped, wined and dined by the media. Companies have fallen over themselves to win my approval, complimenting my youth, designing clothing for me, creating electronics around what I found interesting. TV shows that didn’t meet with my approval were abruptly canceled, music that didn’t match my tastes plummeted to the bottom of the charts. Everything I touched smelled of roses; what I didn’t like couldn’t be thrown out fast enough.

That’s all coming to an end. At the end of the month I turn 24. My affair with the media is ending slowly with the messiest of breakups, the worst form of rejection; just as I come to realize my power, it’s taken away from me. One year I have left, one year during which companies will pay attention to what I do with my money, pollsters will be thrilled to hear my opinion, and focus groups will clamor for my participation. Come 25, it’s all over. I become a part of the larger “18-35” demographic, which exists only to please the baby-makers of the early thirties, the people who have already turned over for the next generation but remain convinced of their own importance.

It hurts all the more because I haven’t given it the appreciation it deserves. I haven’t properly enjoyed the privileges of youth. Three months before my tenth birthday, I started preparing for double digits. Ten was going to be a whole different playing field; it used up twice the number of spaces as nine. But when it came, ten didn’t feel as different as I thought it would. Just when I thought I had finally caught up with my fellow students, a month after I celebrated the glory of ten some had the nerve to go on to eleven. It wasn’t fair. I started looking towards eleven, those twin ones, oh-so-elegant in their parallel thinness, standing straight and tall side-by-side.

It became a yearly ritual; come September and the start of school, I looked ahead to my birthday, my chance to join my peers. I practiced my new age, answered my mirror’s question “How old are you?” with the next number in the ladder. Seventeen was my favorite. Seventeen seemed the height of glamour. Seventeen was the Sweet Valley High girls, senior year of high school when you can drive your friends to football games and shopping after school on Friday afternoons. Seventeen has its own magazine. But seventeen wasn’t that different from sixteen; life doesn’t change overnight on your birthday. You don’t get to wake up a sparkling new person.

This year my problem grew worse. My practicing has become powerfully delusional. A new acquaintance asked my age; “24,” I said confidently. But a few minutes later I realized I had three more months of 23 to live. And instead of becoming depressed with the confrontation of my immaturity, my inability to measure up because of my youth, I was overwhelmed with a sense of loss. Three months, gone. Three entire months of twenty-three, of influence and power, of youth and glory, gone.

And yet, what have I missed? Why do we glorify those six youthful years? The longer I think about it, the less sense it makes to me to laud someone for their youth. Sure, twenty-one year-olds can eat what they want without gaining weight, and they can drink all night without getting bags under their eyes for three days, and they can spend an entire paycheck on one item of clothing without spending sleepless nights feeling guilty about not contributing to their retirement fund instead, but have they accomplished anything noteworthy?

We glorify youth because they have yet to reach their potential. They haven’t let life’s worries get them down yet. The world is your oyster, the sky is the limit. And with these endless possibilities comes the a wonderful opportunity to realize your own potential. Forget the advertisers who think that youth is about beauty and power: youth is about finding yourself, exploring the world, deciding your path.

I’ve spent the last month mourning the loss of my youth, wallowing in self-pity for the lost opportunities of clubbing and dating, but it was misdirected; the real loss is of time spent recognizing myself. While I was sitting at home and watching NCIS reruns, my former classmates were traveling the world, volunteering for political campaigns, and getting down and dirty in medical internships. While I looked to the future, I glossed over the part where we begin to realize our potential. I skipped past the personal growth opportunities and headed straight for worrying about how to pay for my offspring’s college education (made all the more alarming when you realize I don’t have children).

I declare an end to the wallowing, to the mourning, to caring about what the advertisers think is important. No more waiting for my future to happen to me, no more practicing my next age. I have three hundred sixty seven days left until twenty-five, and I’ve started recognizing my potential: I wrote this down.

Greatness in The Age Of The Internet

The greatest fear for writers is producing inconsequential work. A writer sits down To Write and the end result doesn’t seem pertinent, important, noteworthy. There is so much pressure to be the Next Great Writer and barring that, to Write Something Good. We want to be the next Hemingway, the next Shakespeare, the next Homer. We write and we slave and we obsess over words and nuances and where to place a comma or perhaps we should just forget it all?

There is pressure to be Great. This doesn’t just go for writers; it goes for everyone. In The Age Of The Internet, anyone can be a star, and therefore you should be a star. Here is your soap box, sir, please step out to the street corner of your choice.

Before The Internet, there were Informed People who made the decision as to what was Good and what was Not Good Enough. Music producers and movie directors, publishers and studio executives decided who had Talent and should be paraded forth as The Next Big Thing and who needed to go home and look for a new career. Mediocrity was not tolerated; only Greatness was allowed.

Then came The Internet. Lo and behold, a new decider in the midst, a new standard against which to measure success. “Yes!” came the cries from the masses. “At last, it is my turn! No longer will I be oppressed by the limited opinions of the Rich-And-In-Charge. I will go straight to the public and my long-held beliefs in my own personal greatness will be upheld!” The internet gave us a new scale. It allowed anyone to shine through; we are in charge of determining greatness.

The problem is the internet, instead of bringing out the best in us, often brings out our self-obsession. The internet is our Tool To Express Ourselves. The platform for our new performance, the means by which the world will be introduced to us, the Great Writers. We write and we post and we blog, and we comment on others blogs and leave notes like “Hm, I don’t know if I quite agree with your point of view. See my blog post here for my thoughts on the matter” and “Yes, my thoughts exactly! I wrote about this last week. Click here to read my blog post on it.” Everything relates back to us, the Great Writers.

But there remains a question: who determines that we are Great Writers? Is it a self-imposed crown, or is it the readers who laud our writing and shout for more? Can we be Great Writers if no one reads our work? What if no one reads it now, but future generations relate to our astoundingly astute, ahead-of-our-time social commentary? If no one reads our work, should we still write?

Yesterday, a blog post criticized the idea of the “contract” a writer has with his readers: the writer is obligated to please the reader, and the reader demands changes when they are unhappy with the writer's work. There is no contract, the blog claimed. A reader does not have the right to demand anything of a writer. A writer is obligated to write what is on his heart, what he needs to write. If a reader isn’t happy with that, too bad. He should go write himself.

By this merit, a Great Writer is any writer, and every writer is a Great Writer. Anyone who wants to write should and will; the audience is irrelevant.

It is necessary to go further than this. A writer doesn’t write for himself. A writer writes for the reader and the writer. A writer writes what is on his heart because of what he has witnessed and these are things that have also affected other people. No man exists in a vacuum. A writer’s job is to inspire people, to reach out and connect with people and to make them question their assumptions and opinions. A writer’s job is to ask questions, to explore different perspectives. The reader should expect the writer to challenge him. Nothing more.

It's these small tidbits that make life worthwhile...

Overheard at the complex pool last night: "I've just discovered that my glasses don't work underwater."

Hooked: Telling the Truth about Technology, in an Exaggerated, Slightly-Blown-Out-Of-Proportion Way

Confession: I sometimes select books by their cover.

Case in point: A few months ago, while searching the “New” section at the library, a shocking yellow-orange cover caught my eye. “Hooked,” by Matt Richtel, a technology journalist in San Francisco. I bit the hook (no pun intended) and checked it out. Fantabulous choice, highly recommended. Sometimes judging by the cover is a good idea.

The premise of “Hooked” is that during the dotcom boom, companies looked for ways to increase the pull of computers and other technology to entice consumers to their products. Technology became addicting. Consumers are bombarded constantly with new information, and when it slows down, we get bored and seek new stimulation.

The catch is technology becomes all consuming. A person spends more and more time at his computer, surfing the web, following link after link, finding any excuse to stay online even when his body tells him to take a break for food, drink and bathroom duties. The desire for stimulation overcomes the basic needs of humanity. If a person tries to go cold turkey and stave off his addiction, the shock is killer.

It really reached out to me. I have found the knowledge-giving power and instant gratification of the internet enticing all too often; though it may not kill me, it can be difficult to pull away at times.

Why do we seek out technology instead of books and education? A fast-paced book provides action and stimulation (granted, the reader must have a smidgeon of imagination for this to work) but it also requires more work. As a reader, you must commit to the book in order to get the same satisfaction you would get from a blurb online. If the opening paragraph is boring, you must trust that it will improve, whereas with an online article, if the headline or opening line doesn’t hold your attention, there are thousands of other articles you can turn to that will pique your interest.

We’ve foregone the discipline and dedication of long-term satisfaction and turned instead to the pull of instant gratification offered us by the internet. Reporters work around the clock, literally 24/7, searching for new ways to capture the evermore-elusive attention of the public. But it’s a self-feeding cycle: readers crave more news. Publishers hire more reporters and post content more often. Readers skim more, read less and demand more information.

How long can it continue? News stations won’t be able to provide news every second of every day and we’ll be left bereft and empty. You can see this problem with 24 hour news television channels like CNN; there aren’t enough stories to fill the time, so the stories repeat themselves in half hour segments. We tune in to hear the same stories repeated with new journalists offering their interpretations, endlessly arguing over nitpicky points that probably don’t matter in the long run.

I wonder, though, if this instant information actually serves to detach us from the world. We sit in our safe abodes and comment on the news, analyze it and give suggestions on how to improve the situation but none of it feels quite real. We aren’t involved, the end result doesn’t affect us much, or if it does, it comes about in such a convoluted, indirect way that we think it’s a separate event; who would realize that a hurricane was caused by a butterfly?

When we are bombarded by constant updates on wars that happen halfway across the world and which candidate wore blue and which wore black, it becomes difficult to determine what is important and what is inane, to see what truly affects our worlds and matters and what simply serves as white noise to distract us from the ennui of our lives. We need to reduce our exposure in order to regain control of our lives; reduce the white noise and start listening to your brain and your heart. Think about your interactions with technology: what are you doing and why? If you're just clicking on that link for lack of anything better to do, stop yourself, get up and walk away. Meet with friends, engage your brain, stimulate your mind and body. Read the news to stay informed, not to stave off boredom.

Better yet, read a book.

"Handlebars": Witty Social Commentary or Simple "Patting Myself on the Back"?

There’s a new song on the radio, “Handlebars” by Flobots. I’m in love with this song. It's unclear to me if it’s a whimsical display of bravado and self-aggrandizement or a social and political commentary on the egotistical nature of the developed world right now, with the ever increasing popularity of the internet and the magnification of every individual’s 15 minutes of fame.

Either way it’s brilliant and I adore it. The world is becoming alarmingly narcissistic. (Please don’t judge me for being derisive about the self-important nature of blogging in my first blog entry… call it irony)

I'm leaning towards witty social commentary, simply because it's the brilliant subtle-yet-loud kind of writing of the sort I wish I were capable.