Generation X is Sick of Your BS

I ran across this article and being a card carrying member of Gen X, I appreciated the candor. 

Generation X is tired.

It's a parent now, and there's always so damn much to do. Generation X wishes it had better health insurance and a deeper savings account. It wonders where its 30s went. It wonders if it still has time to catch up.

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?

In the last few years I find myself wanting to disconnect more and more. Not from the news of the day but from the damn noise. I feel like there's a low level buzz all around me and even on Sunday morning when the house is quiet, it still feels like it never gets truly quiet. I remember the absolute quiet on a Sunday morning growing up. My parents would be reading the paper and occasionally my dad would watch the Sunday news shows (when they didn't completely suck) but mostly it would be just quiet.

Maybe it's all the gadgets. Back then we had a tv and it shut the fuck off. Now everything goes into power save mode. My TV has a DirectTV box, an Xbox, a Blu-ray player, and a receiver hanging off of it, all of them with a little red "off light." We had a couple of TV's growing up, now every kid in the house has one with gadgets hanging off of them. My computer is usually running to serve movies, the phones are always nearby, the tablets just as close. The hum is always omnipresent.

We are the first generation to embrace the internet-gadgets but the last generation to remember a gadget-free existence. We learned patience and appreciate the wonder of what we have now because we grew up without much of it. The immediacy of the gadgets has turned the youth, who never learned the patience that comes with not having these gadgets, into insufferable jackholes.

My biggest gripe is not the lack of responsibility among the young. That's been going on since time began. My biggest gripe is the lack of appreciation. The lack of perspective. It wasn't that long ago most of the country was either growing and killing its own food, now we are so spoiled some of us have coined the term "1st world problems." It's not a phrase I commonly hear people under 30 use.

I'm not saying I want to go back to a tech free world. But I AM tired. Everyone and every gadget wants my attention constantly. There is always something. I'm sure my fellow 40 somethings are nodding their heads. Can we just be patient, take a step back and take a minute to look around? Does EVERYTHING have to be "right fucking now?"

And when you do get it right now, can you stop complaining about it?