More musings

My friend Melody passed this on to me today. For those of you M.A.Y.A.s that have seen Garden State and The Last Kiss, do you think Zach Braff is the voice of our generation? Or do you just wish someone would crush his larynx? Such musings can be found in Josh Levin's article, "Why I hate Zach Braff," on Slate.

Go here.

Monday musings-Week of Sept. 25

Howdy folks!
This is going to be a lean musings. I'm moving this week, and Linterella is busy in her "real" job. This would be a good time to remind you, the young, fabulous and broke reader, that we are open to suggestions and postings. Feel free to contact either Linterella or myself.
This tells of Roadtrip Nation, a company dedicated to issues that affect young adults. They were the creators of "The Open Road," a documentary of a bunch of twentysomethings traveling all over this great country of ours, trying to get interviews with popular people on how to deal with life. I've seen parts of it, and what I saw was really good. Check out this feature on them:

here

Any minute now, my ship is coming in.

I think it's easy for people to assume that I've got it all together, especially when it comes to my career. Here I am, at 27, in the position I considered my "career goal" just months ago. I've made this somewhat miraculous professional ascent. I appear to be successful and driven. To have set goals and acheived them. To be at the top of my game, a rising star.

(Sigh.) But, I have to admit, I still have NO idea what I really want to do with my life. I'm walking this journalism path. I chose it. I've found satisfaction in it. But I'm frequently distracted by other desires of my heart.

In college, I had difficulty narrowing my interests to just two majors. I ultimately chose Art and Communication, but I could have easily studied (and loved) English, Film, Global Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, or Theology. I think what Art and Communication offered was the opportunity to explore all areas of life within a defined medium: The subject matter and scope of my art and my writing was unlimited. Therefore I wasn't really limiting myself at all.

Likewise, I cannot accept that journalism is my sole career path. As soon as I got my foot in the door, I was thinking of the next adventure. Maybe I want to be an author, I thought. Or a script writer. Or get a graduate degree and teach. Or throw it all out the window and get a mindless, no-stress job that will allow me ample time to travel and serve those in need.

It's not about not wanting to work. It's me stuggling to reconcile what I do with what I believe. I have a desire to do something meaningful, and I'm not convinced that what I'm doing right now is meaningful to anyone. I sit in an office all day making sure the editors at my magazine meet their deadlines, routing pages through production, and running meetings. I think I'm good at the work, but I don't go to bed at night feeling like I've made a difference in the world.

Maybe I'm naive, but I want what I do to mean something to more than just myself.

Monday musings-Week of Sept. 18

Two articles came my way that might be of interest to you. They both deal with fiscal responsibility and talk about how the cultural ideals of being an adult=lots of cool stuff that you can't afford is causing a frugal undercurrent. The second article deals specifically on how government regulations and subsidies may be doing young adults more harm than good. I'm not sure if I agree with it or not, but it's worth a look. Happy reading.
Check them out:

here

and

here

Also, if you get a chance, get Yo La Tengo's "I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass." It will kick your ass in all the right places.

That feeling you get when you're living...

I was catching up on emails tonight, and I was able to write back a professor from my undergrad days. He was the chair of the Communication Studies department, and is now retired to a cool place in the South. Him and I still have kept in touch after college. Every time I do one of my mass updates, I can guarantee on him writing back to say hello.
In writing him, I was taken back to college memories, my last semester in undergrad, to be exact. I was in his Interpersonal Communication (AKA the crying class), and for the most part, kinda cared and didn't care. I had mass senioritis, and mass fantasies of New York (which will be another entry at some point in the near future). But this professor always had a way at reaching me, especially when I didn't want to be reached.
One of the classes found an unsuspecting soul sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, looking at each of her/his peers. The person in the middle would then look at every person in the room as they made a statement about them, either in praise or in criticism: it didn't matter what was said, just as long as it was the truth. The receiver could do nothing but say thanks and move on to the next person.
Because of how long this exercise can take, not everyone was able to do it. But that wasn't in the cards for me.
Everyone was very kind in their words, and I knew they were sincere, for which I was--and still am--very grateful. At the end, it was the professor's turn. He had piercing blue eyes, and they were the eyes of a sage, someone who KNEW and someone who felt compelled to speak the truth. He looked at me and said, "Mike, you use anger and cynicism to hide your true feelings. You are afraid to feel."
My first instinct was to get pissed off, but luckily, I just sat there for a second.
It would take a while, long after I graduated, for me to realize the gravity of that moment. For the first time, truly possibly in my life, someone figured me out.
As I told my friend Laura, I believe every day is a life-changing experience, but there are those moments in time which ALTER you, rip off your skin, open up your rib cage and expose your heart and soul to the air of being. My time in Oxford, accepting the Texas job over the phone on a rainy December night and this moment changed me.
Those that know my personal upbringing know that I have a lot to be angry about. I had a problem controlling my temper when I was younger and would eventually learn to use humor and an easy nature to subside that rage within me. In many ways, it's still there: that primal, gut urge that all is screwed up, and there ain't a damn thing I can do about it.
But I learned from another professor that anger is a secondary emotion, that anger stems from and is fueled by deep pain and sorrow. And if you can't cry about it, you'll get angry about it.
I was told that when I got older, I would learn to control myself and the anger and pain would eventually go away, to forever lay in that state of numbness. I think most men are told that. Anger is tough for men, I think. It is drilled into us that anger should be the first response to pain, even feeling in general. Girls cry, men get angry.
What a crock of shit.
It's tough to be a human being today. I think everyone, both male and female, will agree on that assessment. In my opinion, women deal with stuff better than men. In the end, men don't deal because somewhere down the line, we forgot how to feel, and if we do feel, it's so private and so sequestered, it's almost suffocating.
I do realize that I express myself a little stronger than others. I'm OK with that, I put myself out there, so I accept the reactions and consequences that comes with that. But what I don't accept is those thoughts that creep up on me not to feel, not to express pain, not to feel lonely, or feel sad, or feel jubilant, or hopeful. Or most importantly, feel love. Because when that happens, I'm not living. I cannot afford not to live.
Besides, I know of one professor who will call me on it.

Would you like fries with your happy medium?

I have this memory of my mother and I talking about life way back when. I have a penchant for having a bit of a higher high and a lower low than some. Not in the "I need help" sense, but in the "Plunk would have been such a good thespian" sense. Something happened, and I was feeling pretty low about it (probably a her) and my mom was trying to console me. She told me that when I got older, I'll learn to have a happy medium. The highs won't be so high, and the lows won't be so low. Of course, that's when you live on Stability Lane.
Once the youthful angst fades and whenever the decision is made to be a bonafided adult, I think people make a choice to either be "happy" or "medium," but rarely both.

On another quasi-philosophical tangent, if both God and the devil are in the details, who is in the big picture?

OK, I need to go to bed.

Monday musings-Week of Sept. 11

Howdy readers!
I'm going to try and gather some stuff to read every Monday about the M.A.Y.A. Years or whatever is of interest. Thank you to those who have already taken a look at this site. If you have any ideas, give a shout.

1. I can't believe it's already been 5 years since 9/11. I was watching the 9/11 documentary on CBS last night with my dad, and even though I saw it 4 years ago, it still was disturbing. I was a senior in college when the towers fell. My roommate Jerry, who was an exchange student from South Korea, ran into our room saying, "New York is on fire!" But I thought he said "the house is on fire!" So as I ran out the door, I caught my other roomies looking at the TV.
I would think about my stepmom's relatives that lived in D.C., as well as Jeff and Melanie, family friends that were working at the Department of Commerce at the time. Fortunately, they weren't hurt, but it seems the degrees of separation between a friend and someone who died are too small. In fact, a little bit of all of us died that day...at least a little bit of me did.
I have saved a copy of the special edition of Time Magazine, plus the L.A. Times Commemorative Edition to show my children when they learn about the event in school. I hope to teach them the realities of ideas and ideologies; how the freedom and right to express-and live-an idea goes both ways. I hope my children understand the preciousness of life, and how fleeting it really is. And I hope they never forget that the opposite of faith isn't doubt, but rather fear and certainty. I hope I never forget that.

2. An op-ed piece by Meghan Daum in the L.A. Times that ran over the weekend was of great interest. Commenting on a study that found that fathers over the age of 40 were six times as likely to create autistic children as fathers under 30. This gets to the heart of the matter:

"The real lesson behind this study may not be much different from that old maxim about having a child, which is that there's never a right time to do it. Biologically speaking, we're probably best off reproducing in our early 20s, but the economic and social realities of the last 30 years or so have more or less conspired to make that a pretty bad idea. Unless you happen to be Reese Witherspoon, young parenthood often correlates with higher rates of poverty, not to mention disenfranchisement from the cultural phenomenon of child-as-middle-age-status-symbol. If "Mommy Wars"-type literary anthologies and blogs such as urbanbaby.com are any indication, parenthood is not for the young but for over-mortgaged elites who debate the merits of sign language for babies as though it were an international policy issue.

But what about the 30s? That's no time to have kids either, especially if you're a middle-class professional who feels compelled to put in 60 hours a week to gain the economic status increasingly necessary to support a family. In households in which both partners are working, changing diapers while trying to make law partner can quickly devolve into a situation resembling hell.

That leaves the 40s, which would be a fine time to start having kids if it weren't for the fact that many women can't get pregnant at that point at least not without the help of expensive reproductive technologies. Many men, of course, have been wise to this for years, often waiting until they're prosperous and middle-aged to begin having children with the kind of younger women who either don't want to make law partner or are willing to spend their husband's money on nannies while forging their own corporate ascents."

Here's the link to the article:

here

Enjoy and discuss!

Of Cell Phones And Sock Monkeys

I was in Los Angeles last weekend, helping my little brother move into his freshman dorm room at my alma mater. In the midst of orientation activities, trips to Wal-Mart, and helping arrange my brother’s new space just so, I met up with Plunk to hang out and talk about this M.A.Y.A. blog. The timing was kinda perfect.

I was in my brother’s shoes exactly nine years ago. I packed up all my can’t-live-without possessions (at the time, these included a talking Buzz Lightyear toy and every yearbook I’ve ever received), and I moved into a dorm room with two strangers six-and-a-half hours away from my parents, my hometown, and the only life I knew. It was exciting and a little scary. The overall sense during those first days and weeks was that I was on the brink of something big. And that bigness was adulthood.

Which kinda begs the question, during the years between then and now, did I ever actually become an adult?

After college graduation, I moved back in with my parents. I got an internship, then a job. I joined a church group. I moved out. I paid off my car. I started paying into a 401K. I got a promotion. But my cell phone is still on my parents’ family plan, I continue to sleep with a sock monkey, I’m still not sure about what career I want to pursue, and marriage is so far away I’ll be blind before I see it coming. In many ways, I am my 18-year-old self trapped in a 27-year-old body.

Plunk has coined the term M.A.Y.A. (middle-aged young adult.) That’s SO me. I’m still learning and growing, and I’m kind of liking the leisurely pace.

I hope you will enjoy reading about our thoughts and experiences…

First things first...

What is an adult?
Yeah, I know. It's an absolutely ridiculous question.
Or is it?

I want to get your thoughts on this question, but let me throw out this idea and see if it sticks:
Our society lacks a rite of passage--a clear point from childhood to adulthood. Because of this, the blurring of the lines between adolescence and adulthood are now creating individuals that are adult in a physical sense, but not in a societal sense. In essence, we have a generation that is stuck in the gap.

When I was growing up, I was told this is the path to my life...My time in junior high school (assuming I would survive it) would prepare me for my time in high school. My time in high school would then prepare me for my time in college. My time in college would then prepare me for a career and thus, the rest of my life. By the time college was over, I would be free to consider myself an adult.
I can say with a good amount of certainty that is how most of the majority of society that are "adults" view the linear line of life (oooh, alliteration...wow, college did help with something). Society views living as on a straight line; a life start at birth to adolescence to adulthood to old age to eventually death. Of course, there are deviations in the course of humanity, but for the most part, everyone's life follows this path.
And within this path are markers, points where one can point to her/his life and know what was going on at this point in time. High school graduation is a marker for the end of adolescence, as one is now an adult in the legal sense. Biologically, puberty is a marker for the beginning of adulthood, and the cracking voice serves as a daily reminder on the value of a good sense of humor to make it through life's woes.
Most of those markers have a rite of passage, some commemoration of the end of one life phase and the start of another. Graduation is one, growing a beard is another. Cultures have understood the value of rite of passages to mark the transition from one stage of living to another. A 13-year-old is considered a man or a woman upon the reading of the Torah in the Jewish tradition. Latino girls become women at their Quinceanera. Most Asian cultures recognize the same rite of passage.

In America, we have nothing of the sort. While some would say that college could be seen as that particular rite of passage, the reality is that college has become a stepping stone to the saga known as young adulthood, and the emphasis is on young, as in "I'm going to act like a child because this is time to party, as it's on the parent's and Uncle Sam's dime!" young. It really doesn't do the trick.

So, what are we left with? Well, for one, the M.A.Y.A. Years. More so, society is left with old children, hoping to never grow up.

Welcome!

Welcome to the M.A.Y.A. Years.
Whether you are in the M.A.Y.A. years, are about to embark in that next stage of life, or are our mothers, Linterella and I hope that you enjoy your Web stay at this humble abode. The powers that be behind this blog go way back...OK, we worked on the college newspaper. and have been in several journalistic positions since. Plunk has worked for newspapers in Texas and California, and currently is working on his masters in Southern California. Linterella is currently a NorCal magazine editor and is an overall bubbly individual.
We both find ourselves as middle-aged young adults, wondering what exactly that means and how that applies to our lives. The late 20s-early 30s can be quite the intriguing phase of life, whether one find his/herself married, single, just starting a career, still working on an education or sitting in front of the TV joining the millions trying to beat Super Mario Bros. Either way, the age-and the age we live in-provides unique challenges that both of us feel needs to be addressed, discussed, debated and eventually lived out.
So, dear reader, we intend for this to be a dialogue. We value, covet and wish for your input. Leave a comment, in fact, leave two, just because you want to. At some point, there will be opportunities for posting and contributing. Feel free to send us something. It will be edited for ambiguity and lack of clarity, of course (that's a joke, but do laugh anyways). But in the end, this may be some of the hardest times in one's life, or possibly the easiest. Either way, saying you're a M.A.Y.A. is pretty darn catchy (watch for the new fashion line in the Spring).