A former coworker recently noticed that the young people in his office didn’t seem to be doinghappy hoursanymore.
He’s married, in his 30s, and has been amiddle managerfor a while now.
One of the underappreciated rites of passage of aging is the moment you realize that you’re an adult.
It’s one of those things that sneaks up on you.
Suddenly, it hits you that the answer is you.
Millennials: On the map of aging, you are here.
In the cultural imagination, one of the main narratives about millennials has been thatthey’re young.
They were defined by a sense of arrested development, a generation suffering from a perpetual failure to launch.
But the march of time comes for everyone, andmillennials are no exception.
They’re buying homes, having kids, making investments, and getting promoted at work.
Millennials are the adults in the room now they’re the ones responsible.
It’s neat, but it’s also stressful and scary.
Many millennials are also in a sandwich situation professionally.
Like, what do you mean thereare jokes about millennial managers on TikTok?
Why is everyone talking abouthow to relate to Gen Z?
How am I no longer the youngest person in the room?
“For probably 10 years, millennials were the new thing.
Millennials were the shock to the system.
Millennials were changing everything,” said Lindsey Pollak, a speaker and consultant on multigenerational workplaces.
Our educational formation is marked by graduation from elementary school, high school, college, etc.
In a Zapier survey conducted by Harris,over 60% of millennial respondentssaid they had direct reports.
But even if they’re not managing anyone, they’re expected to know the lay of the land.
It can lead to some imposter syndrome, on top of the overall anxieties that come with aging.
“More junior people don’t know what they don’t know, and you do.”
My gut reaction is that I hate it.
It’s not so fun when it becomes your full-time gig.
The slightly delusional hopefulness of youth has faded.
New aches and pains are creeping in.
People may be disappointed in how their life has turned out and not super jazzed about the future.
Those in the sandwich phase of caregivinghave more financial and emotional troublesthan their peers.
Middle age means you’re at the bottom of theU-shaped curveof satisfaction.
You have these life-course milestones that are bigger and heavier that you have to lift."
“Jeans that are clean” is the only goal when you have a screaming toddler in the background.
There’sthis memethat flies around online.
It goes: “13-year-old me: Don’t tell me what to do.
It crystallizes the current millennial life stage.
Like it or not, the avocado-toast-loving, brunch-obsessed generation is now running the show.
And many millennials do not like it.
There are, of course, upsides here.
There’s something freeing in being the decider and developing that level of autonomy.
It’s also nice to have yourself together a little more.
Millennials are trying to do things differently and better than generations past, to varying degrees of success.
And, oftentimes, we realize they had a point.
The internet is a space for endless suggestions on how to do things “right.”
Emily Stewartis a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
