The Generation X Files

Hands up if you hate being asked your strengths and weaknesses during an interview.

It’s a question I’ve never found easy to answer. It always feels like a trap. How do you describe your qualities – both positive and negative? What if they’re kinda the same thing? Let me try to explain…

• I’m often impatient. I can’t wait for things to happen. But it helps me get things done with a sense of urgency when necessary.

• I am very impulsive. It sometimes leads to poor decisions. But also some life-changing ones! I have very few regrets.

• I am a perfectionist. If I do something, I have to get it right. No matter what it is. It’s the worst one for me because I am my own worst critic. It can lead to me abandoning things if I can’t get them …flawless. It’s been the hardest thing to overcome in starting this blog. I can’t stop trying to polish every bit of it.

You see, it really depends on your interpretation. They can be benefits or drawbacks – depending on how you look at it.

We humans are complex. It’s possible to be all sorts of things at once. It’s difficult to summarize a person in a few words. Maybe that’s why we have to keep making up new labels.

I am all those things I said above. But also a whole lot more. We all are. It’s what I find so fascinating about people.

I think we’ve all got too critical. Of ourselves. Of others. Of this group or that ideology.

I worry that we’ve become so fractured as a species that we might never come back together. That we can no longer talk to each other without raising our voices. That politeness is a thing of the past.

I grow increasingly depressed watching world events and find myself overwhelmed at times. It really does feel like a clown world this year. I mean it when I say I don’t understand the world anymore.

I think that’s why I like spending time with my pets. So long as I take care of their basic requirements, they’re happy. It’s simple. Love in = love out.

I don’t have to worry about accidentally offending them. Or pour out my heart to them one night to be ghosted the next day.

I envy them a little. Their lives aren’t so complex.

I often wonder if we’re from this planet.

I think of all the wildlife documentaries I’ve watched and how fascinating our Earth is. It’s like every living thing on it has a purpose. But I can’t figure out ours yet.

It’s said our ‘soul’ is what separates us from the other animals. But how do we know they don’t have one too? I’m not even sure if I believe that I do?

I do know, a crocodile doesn’t need to dress up in a suit and tie and go to a meeting. He won’t ever need to ask his local (river)bank manager for a mortgage. He won’t have to secure a loan to buy his summer house in the swamp.

I often think how preposterous we are as a species. We seem so ill-suited for this planet that we live on.

Our sun can kill us. We don’t have enough “fur” (and what little we have we shave off!). Large predators can eat us. Even the weather can be fatal. It’s a dangerous world! And we’re making it worse.

But then I think of all the fantastic things that we have achieved as a species. How we’ve carved our way on a planet that seems so inhospitable.

And it makes me hopeful again.

So, I reach out to you now, my fellow Earthlings. Make contact from this planet (or wherever you are!) If we get to know each other, we won’t be strangers anymore.

But I’ll always think people are strange!

Citizen Jane x

P.s. Oops! Sorry! I forgot to say, you can put your hand down! I bet it’s gone numb by now 😛