Finding Self

"We don't find ourselves. We create ourselves." - unknown

This is one of those quotes that I have to agree with, but that challenges me at a really fundamental level. It's true, yet not at the same time. Because there are parts of ourselves that we have to discover. Especially if you are like me and feel you have lost parts.

What does this mean? That's what I'm asking myself right now. As a writer, it has something to do with finding a voice. That authentic voice you hear writers talk about in the abstract. It's almost mythical. But all it really means is everything.

Yes, I realize that's more abstraction. Yes, I realize it makes little or no sense to someone who is not also looking for their voice, or has not found it yet. It means to write what is true to yourself, true to your character. I cannot actually write in a voice that is not my own if I am being true to what I am saying. To write in someone else's voice is to copy someone like Ernest Hemmingway or Anne Rice by trying to write the same way they do.

But this quote isn't only about finding a literary voice. It is also about self-direction. It's about waiting around for your prince (or princess) charming instead of getting up and going on the quest yourself. It's about determining what you want out of life and choosing to become it.

It is also false because it implies that we have all the power over the world we create. Sometimes we do not. Sometimes you stumble over yourself while trying to create yourself the way you want to be. Sometimes that is how discovery happens - by accident. Another famous quote says

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." 

But I think the secret is that truth lies somewhere between these two. Life is not going to happen if you are sitting around on your tuckus waiting to look like your couch. Life isn't going to happen if all you do is watch or read other people's stories all day. You have to make it happen. You just have to be prepared for things to not go as you planned them to go.

"Man plans and God laughs"

Timey Wimey...

"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" The Fourth Doctor, "The Deadly Assassin", 1976

So, I kind of cheated. I know in my last blog I said I was working my way through the old series. But I was afraid I wouldn't get through all the Doctors by November, which is the 50th Anniversary of this brilliant show. So, I checked out all the first episodes of each of the remaining Doctors (5, 6, 7 and 8). I'm sorry to say I was not terribly impressed with 5, 6 or 7. The 6th Doctor, especially, seemed pretty arrogant and unlikeable. And the clown outfit didn't help much since I don't care for clowns overmuch. I was tickled to hear Sylvester McCoy spouting a Scottish accent, though. It made me think of David Tennant's own gorgeous tenor brogue.

I did like Paul McGann, though (The 8th Doctor). I'm sorry that all he ever got was a TV Movie. I think he would have made a brilliant series Doctor if he'd been allowed to continue. He had a lot of promise. I was also singularly uncomfortable with the choice of Eric Roberts as the Master. And did I mention that they set it in California and the whole cast save the Doctor was American? *shifts uncomfortably in her chair* That was just....wrong somehow.  (And I'm saying that as an American.) I did watch the documentary that explained why that happened, but it still makes me shake my head and grimace.

Nonetheless, I've gone back now and am working my way once again through the Classic Series, in as much order as possible. Some of the early ones are becoming available on DVD for the first time, so I my order is a little out of order. Today I received The Deadly Assassin from 1976. It's the Fourth Doctor, apparently without Sarah Jane Smith this time. I have heard it's the source of Adam Savage's quote "I reject your reality and substitute my own!" from Mythbusters. I am looking forward to keeping my eye out for that little gem.

Wibbley Wobbley...

"Don't be fair to the Daleks. They're firing me at a planet!" 11th Doctor (Matt Smith), Asylum of the Daleks. Season 33 (New Season #7)

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." Doctor Who

Surprise! I am a Doctor Who Fan. Anyone who has read the rest of this blog will not be surprised by this. I'm a geek from way back. Literally. Tom Baker became the 4th Doctor in Fall of 1974. I entered the world the following year and never looked back.

Why am I fan? Oh, let me count the ways! There's the science theory stuff, the time-travel factor, the history ideas, there was that episode where they met Shakespeare and gave a nod to the academics...

And then there's the bit where the 10th Doctor (played by the absolutely fabulous David Tennant) got a DNA sample taken which the alien race then turned into a daughter for him, which would have been cool anyway since the poor Doctor's race had been completely wiped out except for him and The Master (his arch-nemesis). But then, in an odd twist of reality and fate meeting up - the actress who played the Doctor's Daughter Jenny is the real-life daughter of an actor who played the Doctor previously (Peter Davison). And then...oddly enough she and David Tennant hit it off and started dated. Last I heard, they'd gotten married!  Making the Doctor the son-in-law of himself and married to his daughter. LOL Actually, I remember reading that David Tennant was a fan of Doctor Who since he was about 3 years old, so he should be pretty ecstatic all the way around.

Meanwhile, I am still trying to get caught up. Doctor Who has existed since about 1966 and I've been slogging my way through all the available old episodes because I didn't get to see them until the late 1970s at the earliest. Our local PBS station was kind enough to show them on Saturday afternoons and I slowly began to absorb them by watching them with my father. I don't remember much from the beginning of that period, of course. I remember Doctor Who with a long striped scarf, big teeth and funny-looking hair being chased around caves by strange robots that didn't move very well.

I was disappointed to find that I didn't like the 1st Doctor much at all. He seemed like a cranky old autocrat to me. I guess he was a product of the 1960s, but I came to love the younger, more rebellious versions. The 1st Doctor is supposed to have stolen the TARDIS. In "The Doctor's Wife" (New Series Season 6), we finally get to meet a human embodiment of the TARDIS. More to the point, The Doctor finally gets to meet her. It's hard to reconcile the 1st Doctor acting like the 11th Doctor says he did.

The TARDIS: " Did you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?"
The Doctor:  "I chose you. You were unlocked."
The Tardis: "Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and ran away. You were the only one mad enough."

The Doctor: You are not my mother!
The TARDIS: And you are not my child.
The Doctor: Since we're talking, I mean with mouths, can I just say, you know you were never very reliable!"
The TARDIS: Oh really?
The Doctor: You never took me where I wanted to go!
The TARDIS: But I always took you where you Needed to go!
The Doctor (brought up short): Yes. Yes, you did.

Then again, we meet the 1st Doctor when he is an old man, so perhaps he was different when he was young, which is supposed to be when he stole the TARDIS, if I am not mistaken.

I do have to say I really like Ian and Barbara, who are the first two official companions the Doctor has travelling with him.  His "grand-daughter" Susan was always sort of ambiguous as to whether or not she counts as a companion. I always wondered, too, whether or not she was a Time Lord. Shouldn't she have been?

Right now I am up to the 3rd Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and I'm chomping at the bit to get to the 4th Doctor and figure out with adult eyes what I was seeing at 4 years old.

In Defense of the X Generation - Culture in Flux

To begin, this is what I understand to be the breakdown of generations by date of birth. There is some disagreement about this. I have yet to see a correct "definition" of any of the generations because they are usually biased depending upon who is writing it. I have noticed Baby Boomers and Generation Yers are very fond of disparaging Generation X and often confuse us with the other group (Generation Y and Baby Boomers respectively). Very few seem to want to give us any credit whatsoever. 

2000 approximately-present Generation Z
1980- approximately 2000 Millennials or Generation Y
1965-1979 Generation X 
1946-1964 Baby Boomers
1900-1945 The Greatest Generation or GI Generation

We are a culture in flux. If you've ever read Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave, you already know what I'm saying. Toffler talks about technology coming in waves. We're on the third one now,where everything is becoming digital (said the blogger).  The pace of this change is enormous and disorienting. "Kids" (those under about 23) don't really see it. They were born after the wave hit. I think the Baby Boomers mostly just write it off anymore as that they are getting old and expect to not understand a lot of technology (I THINK, mind you. I know a lot of Baby Boomers who embrace the new technology, too.) But they are the generation who used to laugh about the fact that my generation (the tiny little Generation X) could program their VCR better than they could. But that's telling in itself. What a lot of this new lot of "kids" don't get is that we remember what the Baby Boomers taught us, lived a lot of it ourselves, but also embraced technology. Also still do embrace it. But we have a healthy dose of the Baby Boomer distrust for machines in us. We still keep inside of us the belief in the phrase "technology is great...when it works."

We see in the millennials a sense of entitlement that we are sure we never had. Now, that may be right or that may be wrong, but I can say this. We had to pay dues that the millennials have never had to pay. We learned  everything the hard way, the offline way, first. My generation learned to type on electric typewriters before computers. We used land-lines before cell phones were invented. We began in an age when you were not connected to everyone 24-7. We had to learn to amuse ourselves because entertainment was not available to us at all times. We wrote papers for classes by hand. We were schooled in penmanship and actually wrote letters. We had to learn to wait for things. And, the biggest thing of all - we were expected to pay our dues in the world before we jumped directly to earning the rewards for them.

This last I find the most disturbing because it is directly affecting what is happening now. (And let me say again, I understand that this is all generalizing and that's a lot of people to generalize.) But what has happened is that, when Generation X entered the workforce (beginning in the early 1980s), we were expected to work our way up. The Baby Boomers were in charge. They had the mid-level management to upper-level management jobs. It was expected that we would put in our time in the lower levels and then, if we worked hard, we would move up. (Because that's the way companies worked then.)

But that's not the way it worked out.

Baby Boomers didn't retire like their parents did. They kept working.
Which meant there were no vacancies.
And companies began to change how they did business. Company loyalty gradually became a thing of the past. Jobs began to go overseas. Whole industries were outsourced to other countries.

In short, the world changed.

And the Generation X kids, who were labelled "slackers" (As in "why don't you go get a job and make something of yourself like I did") and "cynical" (Gee, wonder why), who had already been forgotten in the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, were written off because they couldn't find jobs. Because they were not there the way that they had been for the Baby Boomers.
And then, we disappeared from the media. Seriously. They lost interest. Why? Because the next generation of kids were more interesting. Were a larger group. And we all know that the media wants to market to the largest audience they can.

I could go into more detail about the social changes this engendered, but it's not my point right now. My point is this - there came a time when the Generation Y kids started entering the workforce. And started competing for the same jobs as the Generation Xers. And guess what? The rules changed. In truth, they had been changing all along. But now they REALLY started changing. No longer did the kids have to conform to the original rules. Now the Baby Boomers were conforming to the way Millennials did things. More technology. More flexibility. Everything that Generation Xers had been prepared to expect was done. We had to re-learn just like the Baby Boomers. But most of all, because the rules had changed, Millennials didn't have to "wait their turn" like we did. They were allowed to compete for the same jobs, which were now open. It made a lot of Gen Xers feel ignored and, quite frankly, pissed off. 

And, of course, in the middle of this, the economy tanked. So, even more of a glut on the labor market occurred. Newly minted college grads, Generation Xers who SHOULD have been in their prime earning years, and Baby Boomers who suddenly found the could not retire after all (or worse, had to come out of retirement). 

The other day, I read a blog that supported Generation X's right to be angry (thanks for the permission), but did it in a way that was rather offensive and uninformed. Once again it called us "slackers" and "cynical".  And blamed it on the fact that we never learned how to deal with disappointment. Really? The author (obviously a Millennial) forgot a lot of important facts, beginning with everything I outlined above. But there's more. 

We lived through the Cold War. We saw the Berlin Wall fall, but we lived in the time before that happened. We lived the tail end of it, when it seemed it had gone on forever and was going to have to end soon, one way or another. We grew up expecting to live through a Nuclear Holocaust. If you doubt this, watch the original Red Dawn. To us, that movie was frightening because it totally could have happened.

We were the first generation produced during the rampant divorce rate. We were cynical because we were being told to believe in fairy tales - Cinderella and Snow White, yes,  but also happy little family sitcoms where everything was worked out in half an hour.  Then we looked at the realities around us and saw that there didn't appear to be any neat little happy endings. We were a generation of women who grew up being told we could have it all and do it all, then coming to realize that was a lie. These days, people talk about having a good work/life balance. That wasn't an option in the 1970s - 1990s. It was accepted that a woman could be an executive, but she still had to know how to cook or she wasn't "really" a woman. And she still had to contend with a glass ceiling. 

A working mother was still usually expected to go to work, then come home and cook and clean. A man was supposed to be inept at taking care of children (see Mr. Mom if you want an example of this) and told that a woman could do everything, so why did she need a man? It stripped away a lot of what men were being told was masculine - breadwinner, protector, dominant. It made a lot of men feel pissed off and ignored as well. I'm talking about cultural stereotypes and expectations here. There were people breaking down these barriers, but the censure was always still there. This is the world in which American Generation Xers tried to find their identity as men and women.  We grew up in a world of contradictions and tension. The Baby Boomers had defined, stable roles (even if they needed changing), and the Millennials had an openness of societal roles that we didn't yet have. If we weren't at least a little cynical, we would be incredibly simple and naive. 

That we aren't simple and naive (as a generation) partly comes from the fact that we also grew up with technology (imagine that!) and increasingly more mass communication. We are a well-informed lot. We learned to embrace changing technology from an early age (hence the "My 8 year old can program my VCR better than I can" kind of comments). Kiddos, we invented (or helped to invent) half that technology you are using! And by "invented," I mean we thought it up. That stuff came from our imaginations, our brains, our hearts, our dreams. We played video games with rudimentary graphics and black (and green) screens, using our imagination, and thought "That would make a great movie" or "wouldn't it be cool if you could actually tell that those stupid little pixels were a princess with an actual face". And then we went on and made it happen.  We traveled to other countries and learned what they had to say about things and brought that back to America. We started with giant computers 

Not know how to deal with disappointment? Us? We grew up being able to lose at team sports and not have to be consoled by the "there are no losers" mantra. Instead, we got the "you'll get 'em next time" speech. And we needed it, too, given that life changed on us midstream. 

I'm hearing Millennials now saying that they are the first generation that can't be lumped together and generalized as a single generation. I say that's bollocks. You can't do that with any generation anymore. The Baby Boomers were path-cutters and weight-bearers, stoners and hippies, country-clubbers and night-clubbers, drop-outs and innovators. There is no solid stereotype for a Baby Boomer. And there is none for a Generation Xer, either. We are just as much innovators, philosophers, stoners, cynics, dreamers, standard-bearers, boring suburbanites, entitled asses and Mother Theresas as any other generation. We are political and apolitcal. We are creative and dull. We are smart and stupid. And so are Millennials. I strongly disagree, by the way, that we are, as a whole, self-centered, unwilling to work toward our goals, "conversationally shallow" as one blog put it (supposedly because all we like to do is watch movies), and "short on loyalty." I think we are loyal, but we don't put up with as much as our parents did, because we have suffered so much disappointment as a group. 

The truth is that all you can ever really say is "This was the cultural climate right at that moment in time." I know marketers love to talk about pyschographic profiles of their "target market," but what is interesting is that the more they "personalize" things, the more it becomes evident that there is wide variation from one person to the next. There are frequently a few similarities, which is a good thing, but now you can identify with someone on the other side of the world just as easily as you can identify with someone next door. Sometimes more easily. 

So, here's what I say. Be an individual and not a generation. Go on. I dare you. And, while you are at it, stop  trying to categorize anyone that way.