marcia marcia marcia

There are days when I'm stunned at how all of this technology seemingly came down at once. I barely had put the cover on my Smith Corona when all of a sudden I was in an AOL chat room pretending I was a writer from Miami being flirted with by a guy who was pretending he was older, semi-retired and living on the Gulf side of the same state. Hmmm. Ok, maybe he wasn't pretending. When he didn't see me being interviewed on the Today Show a few weeks later, like I had proclaimed, maybe he figured out that I wasn't who I said I was? Now that I think about it, what chat room was I in? 'Over 60 and Sexy?' Rookie mistake.

Technically I never had an AOL account. I had the standard Gen X'er approach to the whole thing at the time: No way was I going to be a joiner (insert scoffing sound). First of all, everyone was a liar, weren't they? I remember feeling distinctly vulnerable in that overloaded AOL homepage interface. What the hell was all of this? No, I am not interested in playing online poker. Ok, maybe I am, but how do they know that?! Why is there a heart next to my fake chat room name? That's entirely too cheeky and suggestive. Why are people up at three in the morning talking about cat poop and engine oil and how they could 'totally relate to Alanis Morissette's new song? Yes, I remember these things. Who were these people? Crap, I'm one of them.

I signed up with Earthlink.

From there it seemed we were all curious enough about the new fangled technology to at least attempt to integrate it into our lives. We used our brick-sized flip phones (I think Mattel fashioned their toddler version after this circa 1995 gem) and payed our $300/month cell phone bills (and yet, AT&T wonders where the aggression started?) The World Wide Web was intriguing, but I don't remember anything useful at all on the internet at that time. For one, who could possibly remember an entire address? Didn't matter, I was too busy making sure my cell phone calls were just shy of an emergency and it took too long to 'surf' anyway. Of course at the time, that word only meant water, waves and wedgies.

People that are a lot smarter than I am are debating whether or not all of this technology is saving time, increasing productivity, bringing down walls that divide us socially and economically, but the irony is that with my generation (hello X'ers!), what I hear most often is, "I don't have time for it." Oh the pessimism, oh the ennui, oh the anti-joiners...I heart my little niche generation of Rage Against the Machine'ers.

We are the generation that is sandwiched between the "I went to a bunch of Dead shows, dropped out, but now I'm your doctor" Boomers (80 million and some change) and the "I thought I wanted a career, but really I just want a big paycheck" Gen Y'ers (78 million and some change). At barely over 45 million, we are like Jan Brady — the largely ignored middle sister stuck between our do-gooder, save-the-world older sister, and our fame-seeking, lisping, blondentourage younger sister. We had the bad hair, the bad economy, the bad attitude.

So cut to 2011 and get a load of us - I saw some statistics recently that suggest that we make up close to 30% of the Facebook demographic here in the US (they don't break it down by generation, but I did some "New Math" and I feel pretty good about that statement). At over 100 million members stateside, that means that nearly two thirds of our generation joined up! I'm not surprised, but I love to laugh at how we act annoyed and reserved and reluctant. For all the reasons that outwardly it seems counter-intuitive to have these kind of numbers come from the likes of Jan Brady, I think it makes perfect sense.

In the past year or so, having separated and divorced, I've been dating again. There are dozens of funny technology dos and don'ts that seem quite obvious, but some of them really make me laugh. I like 'The Office Guy' on Daily Candy's blog. His economic, quick-witted delivery slays me. I saw one recently where he was giving tips on how many post-date texts are appropriate for a woman to send. I'm a one text post-date sender and it goes something like this: "thank u." The Office Guy lays out the slippery slope after just two texts and all I can envision in my head is the Jon Favreau character in the movie Swingers calling a woman he just met at the bar, over and over again in a row, with the final message on her answering machine being, "This just isn't going to work out." (By the way, I just Googled Swingers to make sure I spelled his name correctly and this is what I got in return: "The word"swingers" has been filtered from the search because Google SafeSearch is active." WTH? a) I had no idea I even had SafeSearch turned on! b) Really? It's that offensive? and c) What else have I been missing?!) I think this is where our reluctant-to-join attitude serves us well. I don't consider text messaging a conversation, I don't think many in Generation X think so either, but we think it has its place. I will admit though, we might be dangerous with the answering machine (aka: 'voicemail' for you Gen Y'ers). Boomers leave short messages (they just want to get you on the phone), X'ers leave entire one-sided conversations, and Y'ers just hang up and text you, or they don't call you at all. I don't have a single babysitter who listens to her voice messages. The answering machine was our technology and ultimately, again, we are like Jan Brady: we want to be heard.

This is one reason why I am not surprised that we are big Facebookers. In our own way, we are still trying to be heard. When you are sandwiched between Reaganomics and a recession and are fed lines like, "you can be anything you want to be, as long as you fit in," our angst and lack of a solid rudder created a generation of kids who devoted ourselves to grounded questioning, authentic reflection about our feelings, and determined introspection. Not the doped-up introspection of "free to be you and me" or the coked-out introspection of "we can have it all," but the "what the hell are we going to do?" introspection. What were we going to get behind? What was our collective thought...irony?

I haven't researched this, but I'm pretty sure irony existed before the first X'er could talk, but we mastered it, we owned it and it became our way of being heard without being wholly transparent. Brilliant. We took feigned ignorance and interest to a new level, making Eddie Haskell look like a bit player. Think of everyone you know between the ages of 35 and 46 and I think we just about corralled all of the smart asses into one corner, yes? Not that irony is just about that. To be truly ironic, you have to be a thinker, and maybe even a brooder, and I genuinely love this about my generation. I think it's what makes us unique. We often think as we speak, question why we are leaping, and I think we feed off of perspective and experience.

We are not credited with much outside of irony, Nirvana, Winona Ryder and Eddie Bauer barn jackets, but our middle-child angst has contributed to some significant cultural building blocks. We are the generation that spiked the number of women in the workforce and we are the most ethnically diverse generation than any before us. Not having a defined path for ourselves, and due to being raised in the midst of ambiguous social change, we created our own path based on tolerance, adaptability and fairness. We were often the product of two-income households, or divorced households, with over-worked parents, during a time of economic uncertainty. As a result, us "Latch Key Kids" are more independent, skeptical and resilient, and we are the first generation to put a value on balancing a successful work life with a strong home life. We have supported advancements in personal technology (to get us out of the office), and now that many of us are parents, statistics show that Gen X fathers spend more time with their children than Boomers did.We decided we wanted more than what it seemed was ahead of us.

Some of this means that we've often been brashly dubbed, "Generation Me," but I think our cautious confidence, independence and adaptability laid critical groundwork for the lighting-speed integration of technology into our cultural norm. Yep, I put that inBOLD. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, are Gen X'ers. So is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and Michael Dell of Dell Computers. Many top executives in ground-breaking companies such as these, and others, are Gen X'ers. We are widely considered the most entrepreneurial generation in history. Unlike Boomers, who maybe on average are more linear thinkers (think: 'step one leads to step two'), and Y'ers who are more intuitive when it comes to technology (because they've always had it), we are more independent and analytical and I think this led to astonishing innovation with measured and thoughtful integration.

So we Facebook, we Twitter, we text our babysitters and return our voice messages. We use our bluetooths and listen to Pandora and rent movies online. We pay bills online, but we would never dream of using our debit cards, and we are the first to share internet privacy and safety messages. We will accept your .ics's, but many of us also carry around our handwritten date books, and we still handwrite birthday cards and love notes. Ultimately we have been good stewards for change. We've been nearly an ideal bridge between the days of typewriters and party lines, to smartphones and Facebook. You can count on us to continue to apply our skepticism with poetic optimism, and our craving for fairness, authenticity and grounded progress.

By 1990, The Brady Bunch was reinvented as a dramedy, The Brady's, and Jan's character had marital problems and then fertility problems, culminating in her and her husband adopting a Chinese baby girl. I was just starting college and immersed in my own dramedy, so I barely remember the series, but I think it's hilarious that this is what happens to the fictional Jan. It couldn't have been scripted as a more perfect middle-child Gen X ending. Meanwhile, I started college with my Smith Corona and ended college with my Smith Corona, but I drove off of that campus with the distinct feeling that everything was about to change. Our little niche generation was just getting to work, in the middle of a recession, with a guy from Arkansas in the White House, and 'RSTLSSPEN' was just about to sign on...

lessons learned in passing.

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

J.D. Salinger's first line in The Catcher in the Rye.

Thanks Mr. Salinger, I agree. I just don't feel like going into it. At least not the "whys" or the "why nows" or the "when did you knows" or the "how did you knows" or really any commentary on how it all happened, at least not right now. All of the analyzing, coping, struggling and enduring drained me. As of the very end of the year, I'm now divorced. It's over and I just need a breather.

Mr. Salinger lost his life in 2010, as did over 200 'notable' Americans that make the type of list that we see in nearly all year-end broadcast news features. I'm always a little stunned to see the list, forgetting some of the names from earlier in the year, or never having heard about their deaths at all, but mostly the names remind me of the profound impact these souls have had on our culture and our lives.

Manute Bol, the 7'7" NBA shot-blocker, died at the age of 47. I remember watching him in his early years with the Washington Bullets in the mid to late 80's, then picking up with him again in the early 90's when he was with the Philadelphia 76'ers. NBA basketball is my favorite sport to watch on television (1. NBA basketball, 2. professional tennis, 3. college football...if the official ranking is of any remote interest). Growing up out west, I preferred teams like my own Seattle Sonics, even loved-to-hate the Portland Trailblazers, the Phoenix Suns' Barkley years, Drexler's years with the Houston Rockets, the Lakers...we had plenty of things going on out here to keep my attention, but Manute was well, Manute. I think (I need to check this) he's the only NBA player to have more blocks than shots. I watched him because he was consistent in only one area, which was intriguing. Too tall, really, without the more well-roundedness of many pro-players, but he had a role and he perfected his one talent. I watched him because I knew I'd see some killer blocks. There is value in consistency.

Staying on the basketball theme, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden also passed away this year. If you know anything at all about college basketball, you know he was an All-American player and then a revered coach that took the likes of Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul Jabbar through winning seasons. I think he took the Bruins to ten national championships, seven of which were in a row. All of this happened prior to his retirement in 1975, so at the age of three, I was hardly aware of his influence. What I do know and remember is his influence after those years. His very simple take on how to be successful, not only on the court, but in life. One of my favorite John Wooden quotes, which my mother would certainly appreciate is, "If you don't have the time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" Enough said.

Richard Holbrooke, a passionate veteran US Diplomat that served under four presidents, died suddenly in the last quarter of the year. He most recently was serving as special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, arguably one of the most difficult posts in today's environment. He was known passionately as a "warrior for peace." As a personal friend of two of my friends, I picked up that Mr. Holbrooke was an irreplaceable colleague, a mentor and a diplomatic lion. One quote that always struck a chord with me is (said upon reflection after an intense Global Initiative Conference spearheaded by former President Bill Clinton): "The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy." Seems to me that maybe he understood that there is power in leveraging and working with the highly emotional tenor of complex situations.

Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who, with her husband and close friends, helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazi's in a secret set of rooms in Otto Frank's company offices in Amsterdam, died in January of this past year. How could anyone possibly understand the stress that she lived with during those years — the fear of being discovered, the fear of the discovery betraying the lives of her friends? And yet, showing up to work day in and day out with this enormous secret just on the other side of a door. Yet, when asked if the worrying consumed her, I am humbled by her response: "No, on the one hand the workload did not allow any time for worrying and on the other hand, we had the satisfaction of doing the right thing."

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So after reflecting on these "notable" deaths and what I learned from their lives, what I am interested in saying is: thank you. It was not the worst year of my life. It was the most challenging for sure, but there were many, many lessons, some that were downright soul filling, tucked into that year. It's fitting that much of the events of the entire year came together at the very end and fell on the heart and mind of a woman who feels it all. So as I sit here, mere days from it having slipped into the archives, I can say with absolute certainty that in many ways, it was the year of my life. The one where I’ve never felt so alive, so human, so scared, happy, desperate, awkward, empowered, loved and inspired.

Perspective is a powerful teacher and I’ve had more cause to reflect this year than any year prior. Just as with the reflections on the lives of the "notable Americans" who passed, the stories and moments that others have been willing to share with me during this past year were powerful. Moments that were incredibly honest, sometimes shocking, always illuminating, and always a reminder of how complex we are as humans. I was grateful to hear, witness or experience these moments, so in honor of them, I'll end by envisioning a year in which the following might have happened. I would love to sit and talk about any or all of them, whether they happened to me or someone else, because if we let our life’s stories be heard, they might tell us what’s next.

This year…

…you might spend two hours in a snowy hot pool with your pre-teen daughter and her friend, having the conversation of a lifetime, while an entire bar full of twenty-something après skiers are just on the other side of the glass and you, not being a twenty-something, might start out feeling self-conscious (maybe it’s because you are in a bikini), but an hour in, you might look up into the sky, let the snowflakes fall and melt on your eyelashes and feel very, very happy to be your age and stage.

You might sit at a dinner table with a woman who’s husband walked out on her, her boyfriend who’s daughter wanted to change her last name after he and her mother got divorced, and a husband and wife whose relationship led to the divorce from a close friend of yours (who obviously was not in attendance) and find yourself drinking champagne and talking about their crazy neighbor and too-spicy penne ala vodka.

You might have many EVCFs (Email Volley of Confusion and Frustration). So many in fact, that you might create an acronym for them.

You might receive a wildly expensive gift on a first date, making that (too bold of a move) the precursor to it being the last date, and secretly wonder if you could sell it on Ebay to pay your legal bills.

You might write your ex a manifesto on love, life, self and marriage that ends up falling on deaf ears, but you might save it and think you should present it to your next love and say, “This is what I want. Are you in?” You might think it’s silly to waste a good stream of consciousness.

The greatest two words all year might be “or not,” also known as: "not your responsibility."

You might feel so incredibly fucking excited about the life that is opening up all around you that you can't stop yourself from singing at the top of your lungs while driving down the street and wondering if the people in the neighboring cars are as happy as you are. You might think not.

You might be obsessed with all forms of electronic communication, so much so that you might experience the unfortunate event of someone accidently opening the bathroom stall and you not being sure what is more embarrassing — the texting or the partial nudity.

You might find that your already close relationship with your mother actually had room to grow. You will be eternally grateful for her support.

Your best friends might have the best timing and they might save you, over and over again.

You might find yourself in a hot tub with half a dozen singing choral opera singers.

You might lose your cell phone in a hot tub, when you are not even in the hot tub, because a man trips and knocks your wallet out from under your arm because he might have been stunned to see a woman try to kiss another woman. That might not be only time that year that you get propositioned by a woman.

You might experience the toughest moment of your life when you tell your daughter that you are separating from her father, and over the next year, she might blow you away with her transparency, her intelligence, her responsibility and her resilience. It might be the most difficult, but the most inspiring thing you will see all year.

Your funniest childhood friend might say that you are funny.

You might discover that your 20 year old college nickname is actually spelled with an 'i'.

You might not know how to tactfully change your relationship status update without sparking awkward commenting, while your ex just simply unfriends you and then posts a photo of you on his Match.com profile. It might just make you laugh hysterically.

You might find that bacon is good in every scenario, including emergency abdominal surgery.

You might believe in fate.

You might lose sleep, your appetite, your confidence, your money, your momentum, your faith in some and your confidence in others, but you might gain yourself.

You may find that some friends are necessities and some are luxuries.

You might realize you have to stop putting yourself in these situations!

A convertible ride along the lake, or a walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, or an hour and a half wait in line to eat breakfast, or a conversation on a rooftop bar, or radishes and dip on a summer's day, or racing your daughter down the ski hill, or dancing by yourself, or having your photo taken in Chelsea on a luminous night by someone who thinks you are beautiful, might be salve for your soul.

You might spend three hours with nothing more to do then sit, drink a few beers and debate the President’s handling of the economy, the concept of Jumping the Shark, inventing a leather coat life vest, is there a good Catholic democrat?, giving your children a sense of their Jewish background, and the fairness of how the snow removal debacle in 2008 lost the mayor his job. The last one might spark more debate than any of the others, but that might be due to what number beer you are on.

You might have the best and most interesting conversations of your life.

You might learn that you should put the oxygen mask on yourself first.

Your faith might be restored over a cab ride in your favorite city in the world.

You might look like a fool, feel like a fool, be taken for a fool, but not have any regrets and that includes the hysterical crying when you put the cat down and the psychics (plural), just to name two.

You might cry every day, just once.

You might find new perspective on friendship, motherhood, ambition, humility, patience, endurance and loyalty.

You might receive the birthday card you've always been dreaming about.

You might apologize…a lot.

You might disappoint, but you might inspire.

You might be disappointed, but you might be inspired.

You might be congratulated, pitied, hit on, avoided, smothered, rejected, helped, hurt and saved. It might be overwhelming at times.

You might find yourself not knowing what Florence and the Machine are actually signing about, but not caring because in the way she sings about Happiness, for the first time in your life, you might feel it coming at you like a freight train.

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"Dont ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." — The last line in The Catcher in the Rye.

I don't know if I agree with that one Mr. Salinger. I would have rather shared, learned and then maybe lost, then never shared at all. This year, more than ever. So I think I prefer: "What'choo talkin' 'bout Willis?" Are you smiling? Me too. Rest in peace Gary Coleman (1968—2010) rest in peace.

And here begins, a new year...

over the limit.

This entry will be short and sweet...I'm so sorry for the email barrage that may happen as a result of the re-publishing my blog! I took it all down and now it's all back up and if you subscribe (thank you!) you may receive all of them, again, in your inbox. Just know that I don't think so highly of the entries, or myself, that I felt you would want to take another look. Haha!

Happy New Year! I've missed this outlet and will be back soon...