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A Restless Generation

posted 7th December 2009    Written by: Robyn    CATEGORY: All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Quarterlife Crisis, Robyn, Season 1

Older Generation at WorkHas our generation been set up to be disappointed?

Lately I have been thinking about how restless I have been, and the majority of my friends in their twenties all seem to be in the same boat. Many aren’t happy with their current careers. Many are clueless as to what the future holds and how they can have any say in it.

I’m convinced that we are all restless as a result of how our generation was raised.

If you think about it, our grandparents and parents grew up in times when you worked to make a living; you didn’t work to “be happy.” My grandparents acquired skilled trades. They worked because they had to feed their families. My dad found a mentor after high school and decided to learn the sales business. He started working immediately because he wanted to marry my mom and buy a house. My mom went to college to be a teacher so she would have a work schedule that would make it easy to have kids.

Historically, generations before us have worked jobs in order to live. Our generation is different, because we not only want to work to live, but we want to work to be happy and enjoy our profession. This makes us a very picky generation that finds it hard to settle for just any unfulfilling, routine job.

We think we deserve exactly what we want.

We expect to have jobs that are interesting, exciting, and well-paid. When our jobs prove to be anything but these….we are left restless, attempting to figure out how to make things right.

Growing up, we were told: “You can be anything you want to be,” “Follow your passions,” “Do what makes you happy,” etc. Of course these are pretty sayings that people want to believe, and I’m trying not to be too bitter or cynical here, but these sayings just aren’t realistic. I wish I had been told that making a living is not always going to be fun. It’s going to be hard work that isn’t always interesting, exciting, and well-paid.

Because we weren’t told this, many of us in the midst of a Quarterlife Crisis are stuck trying to figure out where we went wrong. The thing is…we didn’t go wrong. We simply finished college and went through the job application process, expecting exactly what we were told—that we could be anything we wanted to be and use our major in any way we wanted to and that we could make a living doing anything that makes us happy.

Now we need to realize that our generation was raised with false pretenses. We have grown up to expect the unrealistic.

I’m still beyond thrilled that I gave up my corporate job from hell, but I’m slightly anxious about what my future holds. I am constantly trying to make a plan for myself—one year down the road, five years down the road—just struggling to create some kind of direction for myself and my career.

I continually remind myself that I need to change my way of thinking when it comes to a career. I can’t expect something that thrills me each and every day, but I can expect something that is interesting and allows me to use the skills I enjoy using the most.

robyn-bio1

photo credit : pjern

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