#83: The Gen X Career Meltdown
Should we all become postal workers now?
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The Gen X Career Meltdown
I just read the New York Times piece on The Gen X Career Meltdown, and let me tell you, it landed like a brick made of discontinued iPods and dried-up Bic pens.
Technically, I’m a Xennial (I grew up rewinding cassette tapes but also remember signing up for Facebook when you still needed a .edu address), but everything in that article lands for me.
The piece is full of 40-something and something creatives who spent their careers making beautiful, meaningful things, only to find themselves boxed out by the same systems they helped build.
I can relate. I went from writing on the web during the Aughts to working in big media in the 2010s, helping a woefully outdated legacy media company get hip with the digital age. I’ve been in the rooms where decisions were made about what’s considered “cutting edge” and what’s deemed “past its prime.” I remember when I was laid off, a former boss of mine—who was also laid off—told me, “You won’t believe all the opportunities you’ll get when you’re on the other side.” He meant well and probably thought it was true.
But guess what? He was wrong. Even with all that future-leaning experience, post-layoff, there still seems to be very little opportunity these days. Any opportunity I’ve had in the last two years, I’ve created for myself.
One part of the article really got to me: the suggestion that the best option for an unemployed, underemployed, or in-transition Gen Xer creative might just be to switch career tracks. The article highlights the trend of Gen Xers becoming therapists or even postal workers.
Except I’ve already tried some of those options. I went to grad school for counseling in my 20s, and it wasn’t for me. I liked hearing people’s stories, not helping them with their problems. I did a stint as a teacher, and while it was rewarding, it didn’t fit my path either. And postal work? I’ve never done it, but based on my local post office, it looks about as joyful as a root canal.
I always expected to struggle. No one goes into acting, theater, or writing thinking it’s all sunshine and paychecks. Struggling has always been part of the deal. And maybe that gives me a leg up, endurance-wise. I’ve been knocked down by rejection, layoffs, shifts in trends and technology, and the fact that even my most future-facing skills eventually get tossed into the dustbin of obsolescence. But I keep getting back up.
Instead of switching tracks, I’m forging my own path by building things only I can build—whether that’s through this newsletter, my business Align Digital + Social, or my creative projects. I have to keep betting on myself because the alternative feels like slow suffocation.
Gen X is scrappy, hardworking, and adaptable. We came of age in a world that promised us security if we worked hard enough, only to find out that the rules keep changing. But if we’re good at anything, it’s rolling with the punches and making something out of nothing.
My takeaway after reading the article? Reinvention doesn’t have to mean conforming to some external idea of what stability looks like. It can be about declaring your own creative independence, even if it means building from scratch—stacking weird, wonderful little bricks and hoping the structure holds.
As I see it, the only way forward is to keep creating, keep experimenting, and keep hoping that somewhere along the way, it all adds up to something that feels like success. And maybe, if we’re lucky, something that feels like joy.
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