I Just Cannot Stop Crying Over Millennials Facing Job Burn Out!

Imagine being 29 years old and holding down a job in your chosen career and being paid 6 figures to do the work and attend pointless boring meetings.

And then having a nervous breakdown that forces you to quit the rat race because you can't face another dreary day in this dead-end lifestyle.

I try to imagine that and then realize: I cannot stop crying over these poor burnouts because I have yet to start crying over their gloomy and pathetic lives.

I am not sure what is going wrong. Part of the problem might stem from 21st-century methods of raising kids. Children are now raised in cities and bedroom communities. So for obvious reasons, they no longer experience that aspect of existence where a 7, 11 or 14-year-old has had to get up at 5:30 in the morning to milk a dozen cows before heading off to school. That child learned early on that this chore wasn't canceled just because one morning there was a huge rainstorm and the next day there was a blizzard.

Another part of the problem might relate to how little human contact the "next generations" are allowed to experience, even with one another. Texting and emails have replaced conversations that once were frequently held if not face-to-face, but over the phone. The human voice can be reassuring and bring about good feelings. I don't think people understand how damaging it is to have texting replace "voicing." But most of the individuals who make up these new generations have convinced each other that it is "retarded" or worse to ask for an actual phone call rather than to submit texting.

Zoom meetings have brought about a further distancing from younger people being allowed human contact.

On top of that, real success for many in the 18 to 35 years of age category is not simply measured by one's paycheck and job title, but in the amount of attention that the individual receives. The attention that is sought is on an epic scale - not just among one's friends and colleagues but on a global scale. So to fully understand the mindset of younger people, we can turn to the opinions and analysis coming to us from the people who are their personal coaches and therapists.

For instance, Oakland California-based performance and well-being coach Brad Stulberg has stated that a difference between today's young job holder and those of 30 years ago has to do with an addiction to ego and relevance thanks to technology. “There’s now a need to constantly build and maintain a personal brand, which is connected to your self-worth,” he states, pointing to Instagram likes, Twitter/LinkedIn followers and job titles as the most relevant measure of how well you are doing. “It feels dreadful to be on your computer late at night and on weekends, but even more dreadful if you aren’t. That’s when burnout hits.”

I discovered the ideas offered in the above paragraph at this article which can be found here: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/an-entire-industry-is-cropping-up-to-deal-with-millennial-burnout

This article did give me pause. Way back in the Seventies, I adopted the persona my job required. But it was a minimal adaptation. Each morning leaving for work, I wore my "War Is Not Great For Children & Other Living Beings" button on my winter jacket lapel. I wore the button right until the L train rounded the final bend before that train dumped me off inside Chicago's Loop. Then I replaced it with the "Nixon" badge that gave me acceptance by the older people in the office, including the approval that I needed from a mid-level manager who did the hiring and firing.

I certainly didn't need to self-censor entries on my Facebook page or Twitter feed, because those media sites did not exist. On weekends I went to anti-war rallies annoyed that the CIA and FBI possibly would gather footage of my attending those. But I certainly never had to worry that if a friend used a video camera to catch me flashing a "peace sign" that then hours or days later some facial recognition software would scan through cajillions of images held by the world wide web and then out me to my employer.

It also would be interesting to find out if the continual Left-themed ideas that have molded so many younger people's hearts and minds have created a sense of both urgency and despair. If a person truly believes that unless some drastic activity comes about to immediately tilt human activities into totally different paradigms, then if the person spends 40 hours a week sitting in an office making piles of money, they just might feel akin to betraying The Cause Of Human Survival.

I experienced this point of view when I went into my credit union to pick up a new bank card. Before it could be printed out and mailed to me, I had to choose the theme my colorful credit card would detail. I was given choices ranging from majestic mountains to floral bouquets to forests of autumn leaves to one rather quaint design of cartoon people, each one of a different ethnicity, holding hands and smiling before a big bright but I thought "overly bright" and shiny but ominous "One Globe" of expanded dimension.

The Latino bank teller had held a finger under the "One Globe" choice as though it was a favorite of his.

When I chose the forest theme, the young bank teller looked a bit shaken. After all, I am an older person and I believe that he was holding onto the hope that I was an enlightened tolerant human and not a Republican. But now he knows.

I wonder if somewhere among the relics of my decades past I could locate that "War Is Not Good For" button and attach it to my current winter jacket as a way to cheer him up. He looked crestfallen, as though "the nice older lady" who had been on friendly terms with him before might secretly harbor White Supremacist attitudes.

I can't see that it would hurt anything to help him re-adjust his thinking about me.

Does the above graphic depict the mindset of the forsaken plight of many younger people?