My name is Jacob Ingalls, I write Confessions of a Tech Addict but this post doesn’t really fit into that form so Bryan was nice enough to let me post this on his site.
Over the last 2 days, I was at a Logistics and Engineering conference, which I generally dread going to every 6 months but this conference ended up being a bit different. This time around there were a couple other young professionals and doing what young people do in a sea of older people we found each other and had a few drinks after the first day of the conference ended. As we sat at dinner and swapped stories and proposed our ideas, one thing struck me, we were all seeking purpose but not in the way that our parents and grand parents had done. We all said we wanted to be successful but we weren’t sure we had it in us to do what it took to be wildly successful. We were all fairly certain that the 70-80 hour weeks that we have seen our bosses put in to get to where they were was really, honestly worth the effort. As the night went on, it became clear to me that we were seeking purpose and had no idea where to find it. Our generation and even the generation before it has no really overarching definition to it. Almost every generation since 1900 has had something that defined it, whether it be World War I & II, The Depression, The Cold War, Vietnam, The Space Race, but the current crop of 20-30 somethings don’t. We could be called the Internet generation but that has done very little to define us expect that we can text as the speed of light and change our relationship statues on Facebook. I look at my fellow 20 somethings and wonder if we could put a man on the moon before the end of decade, and I honestly don’t think we could, not because we’re not smart enough or don’t have the technology to do it, I just think we don’t have the wear with all to actually do it. From the hipsters to the junkies all the way up to the young corporate shot with her MBA, when I look at my generation all I see is a bunch of people who are already tired of this life at 26 and just waiting for the fulfillment that our 24 hour lives could hopefully bring.
JohnnyBGamer 