Finding the chase and cutting to it

In a world full of Baby Boomers and Millenials, my generation were never called anything by Gen X.  Born between 1965 and 1980, I am slap in the middle of “my generation” and I am going to be talking about it.

We’re the misfits.  Our parents are boomers, and we just make up 20% of the UK population, our folks are still about the same (and they are begining to die off – think about that).  The Millenials also have parents in the Boomer generation and when my Gen Z son disagrees with something I say, he calls me a Boomer!

Gen Xers grew up with the 3 day week a recent memory, and staggering inflation in the 1970s.  We were the first to play games consoles in the home (if your folks could afford a pong machine), and the first to learn computer languages both at school and in the home.

I bought my first computer in 1994, and learnt my 3rd, 4th, and 5th computer language on it.  I learnt how to use a mouse and a WIMP OS (that’s what Windows and Mac OS is to you youngsters).  I built it a modem, and first interfaced to the internet, though it wasn’t really called the internet then.

I was lucky, my dad bought me a mobile handset for my 21st birthday, that fitted in a pocket.  I have had conversations on the 2, 3, 4, and 5G mobile networks.

I left home at 18 for a job 250 miles away from my home, and after three years of doing that job, took myself off to university.  I bough a home at 24, a 3 bed semi that I could pay the mortgage on.

In 1994, I was able to work from home, if I couldn’t make it into the office – it was a condition of my contract – I built that in having had a job where that wasn’t a possibility.  When I had my son when I was 27, I owned a car and a house, and could drive him to the child-minder and head into the office.

I took nearly 9 months off to both have him and return to work when he was 4 months old.  It did hurt my career at the time, but I’ve just about caught up.

I have been lucky – I know many of my generation feel they haven’t had the benefits of the boomer and Millenial generation (22% of the UK population) and the Gen Z (20%), I feel I have grasped the available opportunities and got what I wanted and needed.

Somethings were harder than others: being “healthy” meant I had to buy my first insulin pumps – my success with them allowed my hospital to give funding for the consummables, which was like an automatic pay rise – an extra £1,200 and year. Having the pump allowed me to beat the odds and get to my 48th year of being on insulin without major complications developing.  That has had some awful and frightening moments, but I managed to survive.

I got promotions as my skills improved. So my wages have tracked – something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d just let things tick over. I haven’t been made redundant, again, spotting the trends and putting myself forward, I have avoided that, though it took me a while to work all that out.

I managed to live through Covid-19, as did my parents. My dad died towards the end, but that was from being a smoker for 60 odd years rather than being ill with a seriously bad cold.

I never picked up the habit. I am almost certainly on the autistic spectrum, but I have managed to mask it most of the times. I have had sexist and ableist discrimination over the years, but have been in a position where I was able to largely ignore it.

I still feel like I have been lucky enough to stay being true to myself, through work and my personal life. I have a private pension and can draw a full state pension.

I own my own home. I have travelled from Canada to South Africa, most of western Europe. I hope to visit Vietnam and Japan before I get too old.

I have a son who left home a while ago now, who is looking forward to buying a house in the next few years. I am proud of him, and love when he comes over on a Sunday for a family meal, once a week. We are close enough to meet regularly and help each other out, but we have room to grow and do our own things.

What’s not to love about my generation?