Just yesterday we began the challenge. My beloved and I started to make a list of all the stories we could tell about ourselves, our friends, our past, and so much unknown history about the weird new normal times we live. The challenge was posed by Nick Almighty, arguably the most famous of our besties. He was pondering Jack Kerouac as one of the great writers of his age because he wrote true tales about the most interesting icons of his personal history. We and our friends are way more interesting, and way more involved in living and shaping the evolutionary history of the pre-millenium. We are old enough to look back on our years, and note the unexpected changes that defined our lifetimes…We sowed and hoed the fertile ground of cultural, techno, sexual, and shamanic experiences that shifted the California people of the left coast, and eventually the whole planet earth, to the new mutated history of life that we now leave for future generations to inherit and interpret.
Where to begin?
There are too many characters to introduce all at once.
Perhaps a definition:
synectics[ si-nek-tiks ]
noun (used with a singular verb)
the study of creative processes, especially as applied to the solution of problems by a group of diverse individuals.
That’s nerdy enough. Interesting, but not quite the romantic tragic comedy I am looking to describe.
People of my kind have been called many things during this age of branding and marketing. Too late to be a Boomer, too early for GenX, I am officially a “Lostie” from that generation between the Vietnam draft dodgers and the Me Generation of Latchkey kids with career and “liberated” single Moms. My peers span the WWII “Best Generation” of my husband’s parents era to the late blooming moms who chose to have kids in their forties, most of them living with or married to “second wife” dads.
Nerds and feminists, yuppies, rainbows, and LGBTQX all gained visibility and respect on my watch, but I still don’t know how to label myself. New Age Goddess, Evolutionary Agent, TechnoShaman, Cyberhippie, Cultural Creative… these are some of the monikers I might consider printing on a round of my conscious entrepreneur business cards, or Computer Graphic Artist, Video Producer, Radio Talk Host if I hope to appeal to people with wallets. As 2020 approaches, thought leaders say that Activism is the defining quality of youth today, but I hardly keep up with that chapter of political activism, being a victim of white priveledge that damages my progressive credentials, despite my empathetic and fair minded heart.
I am a throwback since I retired because I am not a slave to my smart phone, my calendar, or my social network. This does tend to be a bit isolating, however, since my friends live lives that scream “Be Here Now” on a psychedelic book cover which disguises their calendar of commitments for the next three to six months. For me, except for a handful of family birthdays and Thanksgiving holidays, the year is basically clear of saved dates. The only pulse in my week is the FUTURE TUESDAY radio show I do with my husband. And the days are pulsed with inefficiently enjoyed reading and online games, meals, housework, shopping, and cooking. So far, we have savings, investments and income that brings in more than we need to pay the modest bills, but the stats on inflation make it impossible to relax and assume this will always be true in the future. For the most part, finances, taxes and insurance are on autopilot, requiring the monthly tally and annual overview at year end. We live healthy and plan to live quite a few more decades, if not somehow making through to the promised singularity where everyone lives as long as they like, which has always been predicted to be in about thirty years by that sage of longevity, Ray Kurzweil.
So, there should be time to write a little chapter of look back everyday. That is the challenge. Here we begin.
TimeIsArt 