A Millennial’s Autobiography

Seeing a 1990s Grand Marquis with an historic plate really does slam home the fact that I’m an adult now. It’s not the bills or the pressure to reproduce and have a good job and career; it’s the damn car that you remember seeing your neighbor drive that now has a damn historic plate on it. Does that mean I’m historic?

I’m 31 years old and I share the common millennial ailment of crippling anxiety and Chicken Little syndrome.  I don’t blame us for feeling like the sky is falling every other day. We’ve lived through more history than any other generation in the finite amount of time that we have spent on this planet. 

Guess that does make us historic.

It also puts pressure on everyone in my generation to make an impact. Some say have kids, indoctrinate the next generation. Some say make a mutha fucking difference. That puts a lot of pressure on all of us, right.  Who’s to say that paying our bills and keeping a job isn’t making a difference. We have so much pressure to make change and to fix the world as we know it that we’re driven to drinking or drugs or copious amounts of caffeine, and doom-scrolling on social media, burying our heads in the sand that we can’t actually fix the world all at once. No wonder 2 in 5 millennial are mentally ill (probably more if you count those in denial (it’s just a river in Egypt, right?)). There’s not a damn thing that we as a generation can do to actually fix the world,  not with that being our goal.  

To fix the world we need to fix ourselves. Eat right, sleep, have good mental hygiene and stop putting so much pressure on ourselves. Do what makes you happy.  That’s what I do. I write. And I can’t help but feel like my words can make a difference in the minds of others and I feel like a selfish ass for wasting time and not sharing my perspective with those who care to read it, because instead I’m doom-scrolling on Facebook, adding more and more fuel to the I-can’t-do-a-damn-thing-to-make-a-difference mentality. So here’s my start. The beginning of a beautiful friendship (I hope). 

Now, if I see another 1990s Grand Marquis, I’ll change my mindset and look at it not like, “damn I’m getting old and wasting my potential,” but as, “yeah I’m mutha fucking historic.”