A new year is upon us. Traditionally, we use this time to look forward, imagine and plan.
But instead, I have noticed that most of my friends have been struggling to think beyond the next few days or weeks. I, too, have been having difficulty conjuring up visions of a better future – either for myself or in general.
I posted this insight on social media in the final throes of 2025, and received many responses. A lot of respondents agreed – they felt like they were just existing, encased in a bubble of the present tense, the road ahead foggy with uncertainty. But unlike the comforting Buddhist principle of living in the present, the feeling of being trapped in the now was paralyzing us.
I mentioned this to my therapist, Dr Steve Himmelstein, a clinical psychologist based in New York City who has been practicing for nearly 50 years. He assured me I was not alone. Most of his clients, he said, have “lost the future”.
People are feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated, bombarded with bad news each day – global economic and political instability, the rising cost of living, job insecurity, severe weather events. This not only heightens anxiety but also makes it more difficult to keep going.
I have been working full-throttle, non-stop for 31 years. I worked after heart surgery and through cancer, all so I could retire in proper comfort and ride into a Caribbean sunset.
- Fascism
- Climate change
- Threat of pandemics
- Threat of healthcare debt
- Police state
- Flesh eating bacteria in the seas
- Red tide
- Well deserved worldwide hatred of Americans
- Weakening dollar
- Inflation
- etc.
These fucking boomers, with the help of fascists from every generation (you are not excluded Gen-Z) have taken a solid shit all over my life-long efforts to live in peace. So yeah, I’m doing the minimum now. Fuck this.
It’s telling that Gen X is virtually ignored in all generational discussions. Boomers fucked us; millennials and Gen Z never expected to live as well as their parents.
But we were raised in conditions where working hard did in fact get you ahead. Pensions, bonuses, annual raises, healthcare fully covered, rollover PTO for extended vacations, no annual round of layoffs.
Promotions actually happened from within instead of hiring an MBA with no experience or knowledge of your industry. People were still getting fucking gold watches on retirement after 30 years of service at the same company. Housing was affordable for a family of six with two cars on a single blue-collar income.
We’re the ones who got to watch the decline in real time, and we’re being excised from the narrative. Millennials and forward had no such expectations to be disabused of.
Don’t forget Xennials (elder millenials) who got to watch us create and ride that initial tech wave, only for the bubble to burst right as they graduated from college. Then just as they started to get on their wobbly legs, BOOM, global financial crisis.
IMHO, of all, I think elder millennials got fucked yhe hardest.
I’m very much an Xennial if we use the definition of 1978-1981. I don’t remember a time without a computer in the house. Sure, it was an Apple ][+, but I grew up as a digital native, coding and all, which is not considered standard for Gen X.
One of the few things I find kinda neat about my age is I was just able to experience an all analog world (just barely). I mean sure computers were used behind the scenes with government or business I think but when I was very young it was all analog clocks, no calculators, mimeograph machines, projectors, microfilm. I was in a pinball parlour where the space invaders machine was crowded around as it was such a big deal new thing. I mean we are talking first memories, earliest school. Then I saw it just advance and advance and advance.
Oh, we had calculators, but they were still 7-segment LEDs.
I mean they existed just like the supercomputers behind the scenes. Now one thing is I went to a catholic school. Its kinda funny because like no one was using a calculator when I was in junior high (but like I think we had one at home) but I saw the first graphing calulators with some rich students when I was a junior in high school. Another funny thing is I had barely seen and used calculators and then solar powered ones where showing up not long after.
You had a very different Xer experience than I. Pensions nope. bonuses have happened but at joke levels. annual raises a percent or two below inflation and non when it was below that and actually furloughs so it was kinda like a pay cut. healthcare fully covered??? Healthcare is a third of my families monthly nut. layoffs were plentiful. I survived some but eventually they hit me. My average tenure at a job is about 5 years but varied from 2 to 10. Promotions from within??? gold watches??? Are you talking about things as they were presented to us as children or that actually happened in our lives. I mean yeah we were fed the narrative growing up but most all that stuff was dead in the 80’s and onward.
I’m talking about what I was raised to expect in the '80s. Of course, I got none of those things, but that’s what we both saw and were told to believe was the system.
ah ok. yeah then I completely agree. We sorta saw what things should be like. Remember 55 as a retirement age? I 100% thought that by the time I got there it would be 50 or even in the 40’s. Sorta goes hand in hand with thinking the 40 hour work week would only get lower.
The economy has somewhat gone in this direction. Good luck getting a job past 40. You’re now retired. And destitute, but hey, more free time!
Feel like it goes both ways. Its an entry level job as far as pay but we want very senior level of experience. I actually had a job ask for a bunch of 5 to ten years experience and then the person tells me its a junior roll and I was like. you mean you want senior level experience but want to pay junior level and they were like yeah and I was like. Sure I will go forward as I don’t have a choice. Never heard back after but I was just being honest which is a big failing of mine.
I thought about going back to school. Now I’m back to convincing myself not to kill myself.
This is probably terrible advice, but I have many suicide attempts under my belt, and at this point, I don’t even bother seeking out help. School is a waste of money.
Im looking for work and I try and put my best foot forward but I feel like I can’t hide the complete lack of motivation I have now. Im someone who normally has a lot of intrinsinct motivation but has to make decisions based on extrinsinct factors but now all I feel is im going through motions since im not currently dead.
On one hand I guess it’s kind of comforting to know many people feel the same way I do. But on the other hand I feel like…this shouldn’t be something we’re all feeling. I’m not American either. But everything going on just makes life very unpredictable. I’m still trying to figure out
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can I even retire? Is that possible in this day an age?
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can I even get some kind of stable job or even a career that actually pays well so I can achieve #1?
3)Can I support my aging parents properly?
And then finally trying to balance that with the unpredictability of everything going on with politics and society, the pandemic, the job market, my personal health. I know things have always been unpredictable. But it feels like they are the least predictable they have been in my 30 some years of life. (so far).
I feel the same but 20 years older so the answers are essentially no. Even if everything went peachy I don’t have the time to build it up. I mean I got to the point of savings but thats being eaten up now so its going to like 99% be living on social security and nothing more if we make it that far. Last I saw medicare would take the lions share of that.
That makes you old enough to remember when your bog-standard savings account outpaced inflation.
I’ve gotten laid off so many times and had to cash out my 401(k) just to make rent that I don’t believe in anything about the financial system. And Social Security won’t exist by the time I’m in my 60s, so what’s the point?
honestly I don’t think I knew enough about banking to know those times so they were probably around but I was just ignorant of the whole thing. I usually did not have any significant savings (money left soon enough after making it) until well after college so was generally looking for no fee checking.
I once sold sweepstakes tickets for my choir to Charles Keating’s wife (Look him up if that’s not familiar.) as she was coming out of the store. I think she just wrote a $400 check off the ACC account. Still, that was a lot of sweepstakes tickets, and I had no idea who she was.
I was just a choirboy, after all.
I did not recognize the name but certainly recognize the first in the pendulum of deregulation crises.
As to Nr. 1, no. That’s for boomers.
As to Nr. 2, no. That’s also for boomers.
As to Nr. 3, if you can’t pay your own bills, no.
:( let me hope lol
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