There's no denying that by the generally accepted rules of who-is-in-which-generation, I am a baby boomer. Officially, boomers were born during the years 1946-1964, and I was born in 1961. But the oldest boomers are nearly 80, and I am 61.
If you're under 50, that may not seem like a big difference, but it's actually fairly huge. The oldest boomers were in their early 20s during the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, bursting the confines of propriety after growing up in the straightlaced 50s and early 60s. I was barely old enough to know what was happening.
I think of those of us born from ca 1959-1964 as Late Boomers, but I've heard that we actually have an official name, The Jones Generation-- because of keeping up with the Joneses, which was a thing back in the day.
But that doesn't feel accurate to me. The so-called hippies, with their wide bell-bottom jeans and their headbands and the constant presence of some kind of smoke dangling from their fingers or lips, were people we saw on the nightly news, in alternating shots with mud-covered soldiers in Vietnam. They might as well have been Martians for all I had in common with them.
We were grade school kids, wide-eyed and a little terrified, as uncomprehending as our Silent Generation parents. Hippies were the college kids of our neighbors down the street or the kids who were rioting after hours at the high school we were still years away from attending.
I don't exactly know where I'm going with this, but I recently read another list of "12 things Boomers do that Drive Millennials Crazy," and there was only one thing on the list that I do (at the moment, I can't even remember what it was, so there you go-- Millennials definitely have sharper minds than we do, my memory is shot).
In fact, several things on the list made me think, that doesn't have anything to do with being a Boomer, it's just a dumb thing to do. I haven't seen a fully carpeted bathroom since the 80s, but "They still think carpet in a bathroom is a good idea" was on the list.
The first time I heard about identifying the different "generations," it was a way to help us understand and relate to each other. But it has ended up being just another way that we accuse and mock and blame. I count myself among the people who are having a hard time being emotionally generous and empathetic these days. What is wrong with us? (that's a rhetorical question.)(sort of.)
In other news, I told you I was going to start posting again, but I didn't. Partly because I'm not completely out of touch, I realize blogging isn't a thing anymore. No one would care if I quit.
Not long ago, I cleared out the list of blogs I follow--which at one point numbered in the 30s-- and realized that only three of them are being actively updated these days: two that are run by teams of writers, and one that has expanded from being a one-woman blog to a one-woman blog with six or eight employees.
I think people who want to do the kind of online writing I used to do have moved to Substack, where you can charge a subscription fee. My musings will never be a money-making proposition, so I'm not doing that. But I'm also not sure I have the momentum to push against the tide and keep going.
I've had a couple of people--neither of whom reads here, as far as I know--be surprised and somewhat embarrassed for me that I "still" have a blog. It would be easy enough to quit, and I'm not sure anyone but me would even realize that I had. But then I think of something I want to say. And then I go back and read old posts that I still like. So here's another one. Maybe there will be a few more.
