After just a year of blogging, I’ve finally decided on a theme! In the beginning, I had some vague notion of writing through my frustrations and trying to find the humor in my life. And it’s been fun. Mostly, it’s allowed me to find out what I enjoy writing about and what others seem to enjoy reading.
But looking back at all I’ve written, I’ve come to this conclusion: I’m not a specialist. Or rather, like most of us, I’m a specialist in many areas. I’m a parent (of neurologically atypical kids), a writer, an amateur photographer, an environmentalist, and a collector of various and sundry bits of natural history and pop culture flotsam. I’m middle-aged, gay, autistic, and vegetarian. I love science fiction, fossils and deserted islands.
And I’m a child of the seventies and eighties. Much of who I am was formed during the Cold War when disco was king and Jordache jeans were cool. I read post-apocalyptic fiction way before it was mass-marketed as the cinematic video games that captivate my sons. The house I grew up in had shag carpet and a TV antenna on the top. My dad drove a station wagon. I saw the sunsets turn crimson after Mt. St. Helens erupted.
So what does that all add up to? Generation X. The “baby busters,” the MTV generation, slackers – we’ve been called a lot of things. We’re a diverse lot, but we have much in common. Many of us, like me, are in their forties now. Some have grown kids or are raising teenagers and we’ve become the dorky parents who don’t “understand” youth culture and tell our kids to turn the music down.
Most of us are juggling a lot of responsibilities and that stresses us out. We’re learning to care for aging parents even as we finish raising our kids. We’re trying to balance work with family life and still find time to take care of ourselves. Many of us are highly educated but underemployed. Wages and salaries are low, and we’re struggling with debt. If we own a house, chances are it’s worth less than we paid for it. And we’re doing it all while we learn to deal with our own aging bodies.
And no matter how you voted in the last election or what church you go to, you share childhood memories with other members of your generation because you were stewed in the same cultural soup. So I’m starting a new blog called The Evolution of Gen X where I will write about all these things. I hope you’ll stop by and check it out.
Fork in My Eye was great fun and a sincere thanks to all my readers. I didn’t know quite what to expect when I started blogging and was happily surprised to feel so connected with people from all over our country and the world. I’ll still be here reading your blogs (though my gravatar will appear as Evolution of X now). FIME won’t go away just yet but I’m excited about my new project.
This link will get you there. I hope you enjoy it.
