Identification Please

Totes relevant... read on.

For some reason, I started thinking about who I am today. I had this rather profound thought while waiting for a burger at The Northside Convenience and Take Away shop (home of Dalby’s best burger). Who am I? Or more specifically, how do I identify? With what groups am I most strongly linked?

Some people first and foremost identify with their nationality. Which I understand; being Australian is great, and I really love living in this country. But I don’t think I’m particularly patriotic, I don’t think we’re *better* than others or that we should keep our stuff and our culture all for ourselves. I’m certainly not opposed to our culture changing or becoming “less Australian” and I couldn’t give a shit about any of our sporting teams.

Others feel strongly about their gender. Men are real men, women are real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (with compliments to Mr Adams). Whereas I see my femaleness as a fact, not a lifestyle. It’s just a thing. A thing that I’m ambivalent towards. I don’t particularly love being a lady or doing “lady’s things” but I have no desire to grow an extra appendage and start loving aforementioned sports teams and other such “man things”. I’m a girl, but it doesn’t define me.

I think probably I most strongly identify with being Gen Y, which is a weird thing to say I guess, given that it’s often thrown about like a dirty word. But I like being young and I like being into technology and I like knowing about new things and trying new things pretty much just because they are new. I am not ashamed by my addiction to social media or my inability to do anything without telling as many people as possible about it. These are things I am, actually, proud of.

I also identify strongly as a nerd. I like things (books, movies, shows etc), and lots of those things are considered nerdy. But more than that my like of those things isn’t a passing, “oh yes I saw that it was good”, it’s more like “OMG DID YOU GUYS SEE THE NEW EPISODE SEND HELP IT WAS THE BEST THING OF MY LIFE I’M GOING TO WATCH IT AGAIN”. So yeah, I’m a nerd. It’s a good thing to be.

I guess I feel like I’m floundering a bit at the moment, because while it’s great to be a Gen Y nerd, I feel like I have a lot more in me; a lot more things I could be.

I care about the fact that our world is still filled with bad things like slavery, poverty and disease. I don’t like how we farm animals, or how we treat our environment. I’d like to do things about these things, I’d like to identify as the kind of person who takes action in the face of such things.

I’d like to identify as a writer, I’d like to be brave and stop making excuses and discipline myself to write.

I’d like it if the job I did was something I could identify as, and be proud of. And I’m hoping that as I embark on a new adventure of studying next year that “primary school teacher” can be a thing that skyrockets itself to somewhere near the top of the “things I identify as” list.

I want to be the kind of person who gardens, who keeps animals, who writes, who eats healthily, whose actions make a difference, who is conscious of the environment and the world, who has fun, who makes people laugh, who loves.

I did some gardening today. So I’m on my way. 

Gen Y: a state of being

Ah yes, a young person with too much time on her hands starts a blog, it really is only a matter of time before she starts ranting about the whole Generation Y thing.  Gen Ys kinda arch up at the way we are depicted in the media etc, and it is often justified – we get a really bad wrap for our anti-social and ungrateful ways. However, I am not about to arch up* because I am, quite frankly, both anti-social and ungrateful.

But I am going to argue that Gen Y is not an age bracket, or even a generation at all – but a state of being. How many older people (men often) do you know who have an iPhone and know all the lingo and play video games etc etc etc? Like at least 4 right? If everyone knows at least 2 that’s actually quite a significant percentage of the population acting like Gen Y-ers who aren’t Gen Y-ers at all.

And, on the other hand, I know a bunch of well-dressed, well-spoken, organised, punctual, grateful, respectful and generally perfect humans who are 18-25 years old. Can we really call these people Gen Y? Sure, they were born in the 15 or so years after the Gen Xers all grew up, but they don’t fit any of the other defining characteristics. They fail at being Gen Y, which should technically make them win at life in the eyes of older people. It never seems to redeem them though; those poor fucks get lumped in with the rest of us despite their good personal hygiene and lack of twitter accounts.

So, dear reader – you might be asking yourself now, ‘shit, am I Gen Y or not?’ This seems like a pretty stupid thing to be asking yourself, given that you are currently reading a blog and probably simultaneously watching a Youtube video, illegally downloading songs and eating nutella from the jar. But anyway, there is a sure fire way to test your Gen Y status. I speak from absolute experience on this:

Ask yourself, have you ever been lying in bed at night in a location (probably a fabulous holiday location) with little reception and been so desperate for contact with the outside world (be it text, tweet or status) but too lazy to get up that you’ve sleepily held the phone high above your head, arm fully extended, and then DROPPED IT ON YOUR FACE? Well have you?

That is the moment dear friends, when you must concede that no matter how old or socially adequate you are, you do in fact belong to that technophilic, whiney, disrespectful cohort known as Gen Y. Welcome, we’re looking for people to start a social netball team.

*Except to say that it is almost predominantly members of Generation Y (and little old ladies) who consistently thank the driver when they get off the bus. I’m just sayin’…