Observations From a 24 Year Old Crone
By: Lorelai Green
Tags: Gen Z Workforce, Capitalism, Economy, Gen Z, Millennials

Like many young millennials, I am currently living with my parents as I mull all of this over, and I have no real job prospects. I am as close to Jane Austen’s Charlotte Lucas as you can get, in terms of economic opportunities. I graduated with a four year degree in 2019, took a job that I hated but stayed in, and was eventually furloughed and then laid off from that job, six months ago. The world chewed me up and spit me out, and I ended up back here (a la ‘the thirty-something gang’ from the Gilmore Girls revival). I’ve spent a lot of time thinking back, wondering where I went wrong. How could this all have been avoided?

As far as I can tell, the wrong decision happened when I was sixteen years old, and chose what I wanted to study at college. It could even be earlier than that, when I decided math just wasn’t my strong suit, and I should focus on the other subjects instead. When I was done grieving over that, and how un-fixable these choices seem to be, I’ve been thinking and thinking, what is the next step? The companies I have interest in don’t have interest in me. I don’t see eye-to-eye with most of the people in my industry because I refuse to ignore ethical issues. Potential next steps range from applying to outdoor occupations to gaining income from a handful of different side businesses, like an Etsy store. These I try to do, and I wait. And I try, as much as I can, when I’m belittled at work or turned down, to be optimistic.

To do only those things though, would be to miss the point of this article. I’ve been mired at this point for months, trying to gather a conclusion with thousands of other young people. Right now, it seems like the conclusion is that millennials in general, except for those very few who somehow knew exactly what they were doing, are screwed. The only way out seems to be to fight as hard as we can to survive and to tax the rich and exercise our right as employees to choose the conditions we will comply with. This means refusing to work for people who won’t and don’t respect work life balance. It means refusing to work for people who treat their staff ill used. For now, you’re a slave to your job, with 20% less income with inflation adjusted than your parents made, and make a fraction of what you are worth. You will spend 80,000 hours working. And for what? You may never retire because global warming may kill us all anyway. From my point of view, our political actions may be the only thing that really make a difference in our collective well-being.

Most days I’m exhausted, trying to pick from those choices. Trying to pick what I think society says I should be. Society does not say I should be happy now. Society says I will be happy later, when I have money and a house, even if I’m not there most of the time because I’m at my thankless job as a worker bee for a corporation. What happens if I don’t make it to later? Doesn’t matter, according to society. Look at all those homeless people you see living under bridges and wheeling around shopping carts. Those people are no different from you and me; they just didn’t have the advantages you do, and they happened to guess wrong when they were making their choice. Then they didn’t have anyone to bail them out. No trust fund, like Donald Trump, who has lost millions of dollars in bad business deals. I feel like I’m finally turning the tide on my understanding, but it’s not without feeling sympathy for those our society abandoned.

All I can do is move forward with faith in myself, and faith in my fellow Americans’ capacity for empathy and humanity. I know as sure as I’m standing here that millennials have been screwed over too many times to allow this abuse to continue, and we will continue to fight for a better life. The path to ‘success’ is never a smooth one, and I can only hope that we as young Americans will carve our own paths, fearlessly.