Nobody Puts GenX In A Corner
I’m a recovering lawyer . . .
and I say that with all seriousness.
Recovering from being a lawyer for 27 years is an ongoing process and effort to reclaim certain qualities and strengths within me . . .
to recover who I was truly meant to be.
In the last year and a half, I’ve been recovering my rebellious, independent, creative, and laidback spirit, which had all been banished to dark corners during my time in the legal profession.
I’ve been recovering my GenX spirit . . .
and recovering what it means to let those qualities truly flourish.
Like so many GenX’ers, I feel like I developed certain qualities growing up that epitomize our generation . . .
having a rebellious nature . . .
being laid back . . .
feeling wildly creativity. . .
and acting fiercely independent.
Although people from other generations may also resonate with those qualities,
and not every GenX’er will resonate with those qualities,
these are qualities that, in my experience, a lot of GenX’ers possess.
The reason I’m focusing on those qualities is that I was reflecting recently on how I’d spent my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s allowing those qualities to be banished to a dark corner of my life.
And for me, it all started in law school.
(Law school graduation photo with my mom).
In all honesty, I went to law school because I didn’t know what else to do with my life. I was a psychology major who didn’t think I wanted to become a therapist, so I wasn’t sure what to do after college. I’d taken a course my junior or senior year of college called Psychology and the Law and thought “well the law sounds cool.”
That’s basically how I ended up in law school.
I wasn’t one of those people who had always dreamed of being a lawyer. I just knew that I liked to argue and stand up in front of people to speak.
I fell into law school without much thought.
And then, for the next 27 years, I continued in my legal career without much thought.
(Photos of my swearing in after the passing the bar. I got to be sworn in at the U.S. Supreme Court).
Like so many people—GenX or not—I fell into a career because I didn’t know what other options I had. I then stayed in that career because I didn’t know what other options I had.
And all the while, I kept ignoring the little voices of my GenX spirit that I’d shoved in a corner.
I ignored the voice of my creativity that didn’t want to be stuck writing stuffy, formulaic legal briefs . . .
that didn’t want to be judged by some other lawyer’s arbitrary standards of what “good writing” looks like . . .
or told that I can’t end a sentence with a preposition or start a sentence with “however” based on arbitrary, privileged rules around what proper English looks like. (Sidenote: if you want to listen to an eye-opening podcast about the privilege baked into the English language, I recommend the Check Your Privilege Podcast with Myisha T. Hill and the episode on Language).
I ignored the voice of my inner rebel, who still tried to act out and buck a system that favored mostly white males with ivy league educations, law review, and federal clerkships.
I tried to ignore my inner rebel by telling it that I needed to play nice, not make waves, and only speak up when absolutely necessary.
I told my inner desire to be more laid back that I had to conform by wearing nice clothes and high heels . . .
and by “acting more professional” instead of more laid back around people who had fancier pedigrees than I did.
I told the independent spirit in me that I couldn’t afford to quit my lawyer job because I had too many student loans and debt to pay off . . .
that working eight hours on a “normal” week and twelve to fourteen hours on a “bad” week was just how it’s supposed to be, so I needed to “suck it up.”
For 27 years, I tried to fit myself into a lawyer suit and high heels that made me feel like I was playing dress up . . .
like I was trying to play a role . . .
a role that was never me.
I banished my inner spirit—my best qualities—to a time-out in the corner for 27 years because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do . . .
I thought that’s what it meant to be a “grown-up” . . .
and because I was too afraid of what would happen if I ditched my suits and high heels for jeans, a t-shirt, and canvas sneakers.
Despite that I unconsciously knew that I didn’t belong in the legal profession, I never gave my true qualities permission to fully come out of the corner . . .
not until I realized that being in that corner had been slowly killing my true spirit.
I think this is one of the gifts of mid-life . . . the gradual waking up to the person you were really meant to be . . .
to what your spirit wants you to be . . .
that is, if you allow yourself to wake up . . .
allow yourself to get up from your seat in the corner, be taken by the hand, and step out onto the dance floor of your life that your spirit has always longed for.
GenX’ers have been both blessed and cursed with these amazing qualities of creativity, rebellion, independence, and laid-backness.
We are blessed with these qualities because they make us a powerful generation that has been responsible for everything from hip-hop and grunge, to Amazon and Google.
And we are cursed by these qualities because they often haven’t been given permission to fully express themselves. We lived in the shadow of our hard-working, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps Baby Boomer parents, who grew up with the “American Dream” tattooed on their hearts and a belief that “hard work” was the path forward. Thus, we felt stuck between our deep GenX desires of creativity, rebellion, independence, and informality, and the conditioning we received from our parents and society about how we are supposed to live our lives.
In the face of that conflict, our basic need to survive and fit in won out over our desires to be more independent, creative, rebellious, and laid back.
When those beautiful GenX qualities are banished to the corner for the first half of our lives, they’re eventually going to demand to come out of the shadows.
And, if they aren’t allowed to come out of the corner, they will begin to get our attention in the most painful of ways . . .
depression . . .
anxiety . . .
discontentment . . .
unhealthy behaviors . . .
malaise . . .
anger . . .
reactivity . . .
hopelessness . . .
you name it.
Trust me . . . I experienced all of those things as I entered my 40’s and walked straight into mid-life with no idea that mid-life is the natural time to start questioning everything in my life.
So, finally, after 27 years of sitting in the corner . . . I got up from my chair in the corner.
I quit being a lawyer . . .
and I traded in my suits and high heels for jeans and flats.
People often ask me how I was able to do that . . .
to leave my stable, well-paying federal government job, long before retirement age (so no, I’m not collecting retirement).
(Photo of me after finding out I received my coaching certification. There’s a backstory to the Kenny Rogers’ t-shirt, which used to be my mom’s).
And what I’ve realized over the last few years is that all of my amazing GenX qualities that I’d tried to stuff in the corner by being a lawyer were still there, waiting for me to take them by the hand and pull them up . . .
to let them–and me–dance to the rhythm they were meant to dance to.
I was 49 when I left my attorney job. Smack dab in mid-life.
People told me I was crazy for wanting to quit and give up the benefits and salary of a government attorney.
But I didn’t care.
My true GenX nature was beckoning to me from the dark corners to grow up . . .
to grow up by being brave enough to know that my wild and free GenX spirit was never going to fully flourish as a lawyer . . .
to grow up by finding the strength to recover what had been lost to me for 27 years . . .
and to grow up by forging my own path instead of taking the one that society thought I should.
That’s the power of the creative, rebellious, independent, laid-back GenX spirit.
Hell, what else would you expect from a generation of latchkey kids who had to figure out stuff by themselves at home?! We are a resourceful group who never truly liked playing by the rules.
Yet, for various reasons, many of us have left our beautiful GenX qualities banished to a dark corner of our lives.
That’s why I believe that so many GenX’ers feel that mid-life is a time of “crisis” rather than a time of awakening.
We are in crisis because we’ve allowed our rebellious, independent, creative, laid back spirits to be banished to dark corners in time-out by outer expectations of how our own, sacred lives should be lived. And now those qualities are screaming at us from the dark corners of our unconscious to start paying attention to them.
They are screaming at us to grow up by returning to what made us such amazing youngsters.
And I don’t mean “grow up” in the sense that we are immature.
I mean “grow up” in the sense that so many of us haven’t fully allowed our child-like (not childish) qualities of creativity, independence, rebellion, and informality to become all that they are meant to be.
Our laid back, t-shirt-wearing GenX nature is screaming at us to stop trying to squeeze ourselves into the boxes that don’t fit us . . .
or into professions and suits that don’t fit us.
Maybe you’re a GenX’er who loves wearing suits or being in more “professional” environments. If so, that’s totally rad.
For the rest of us GenX’ers who feel like a suit is about as comfortable as a colonoscopy, our nature craves a more laissez-faire lifestyle.
This is why I am in the process of giving away every single suit and pair of high heels that I have. If I ever have to go someplace that requires a suit—or even more buttoned-up business attire—you can be damned sure that I ain’t going.
So, whether it’s a suit or a career (or both), if your GenX soul feels like it’s too constrained by it, it’s time to listen to that.
This is now my preferred office attire much of the time . . . .
As I said, I’ve been on a journey as a recovering attorney because I’m slowly getting what had been lost to me for many years.
Will I ever be fully “recovered”? That’s hard to say; but, I believe that “recovered” implies that you are done . . . that there’s no more growth. And I don’t believe that’s ever the case as long as we’re still breathing.
But it’s never too late to recover what has been banished to the dark corners of your life.
In fact, I believe that mid-life is the perfect time to do that . . . we have so much wisdom and experience to rely on and, sometimes, fewer fucks to give.
I have recovered so much of my independence by starting my own business . . .
so much of my creativity by writing however the hell I want to write . . .
so much of my laid back style by challenging what it means to be “professional” . . .
and so much of my rebellious nature by bucking the systems of oppression and privilege.
I have allowed those amazing GenX qualities to come out of the corner where they had been placed in time-out for so many years . . .
Because (with a nod to Patrick Swayze): Nobody puts GenX in a corner.
What are some of your amazing GenX qualities that have been put in the corner? Or in what ways do you feel like you’ve been living your life from the corner instead of out on the dance floor?