Generation Y and the Residuals

It's not atypical for me to listen to a Jillian Michaels podcast. Although she is known as America's toughest fitness guru, I can relate to the many messages she and her Canadian sidekick, Janice, flood the airwaves with. After I have a few Heineken's, my eyes grow awful heavy. As I settle down to go to sleep, I turn on my iPhone and decide that I oughta listen to at least one of the 73 ignored podcasts that automatically download to my iTunes. The first message I listen to is entitled, What if You Do Nothing? 

Here Jillian talks about the what if you do nothing scenario. Say, for example, I am in a relationship and I'm miserable for whatever the reason, and I do nothing about it. What happens? The relationship gets worse. How? Because me, the unhappy party, begins to resent my partner, and resentment translates to hate, anger, and inferiority along with a host of other emotional despises that can weigh a person down. However, if I am the type of person that masks my emotions with food, I'm most likely going to develop a pattern of self-destructive behavior, and in a few years, this unhappy person that I have become, because I did nothing, is now interviewing for a slot on The Biggest Loser due to my self-deprecating behavior for being out of control, and I'm re-configuring my life insurance policy when my doctor gives me an ultimatum of: either you do nothing and die; or you do something and live. And, when I open my life insurance policy booklet to crunch numbers for my afterlife, a lightening bolt zaps me in the noggin, and thank God it does, because now I'm finally motivated to take care of this self-destructive behavior that should have been taken care of years ago. The message I take away from this analogy is this:

Everything is recoverable except death. If you do nothing it gets worse. So let's try and do something. Who cares if you try and fail? Get up and do it again because what happens if it does work out?

 I lay awake staring at my ceiling in the dark thinking how I can apply this scenario to my life. I find the answer when number 72 of 73 spits in my ear buds. This podcast is called, Being Deserving versus Entitlement.  If you think the last podcast got the wheels spinning in the deep cortex of my brain...this sends my brain into a straight up tail spin.

Jillian talks about how everyone is deserving of happiness. EVERYONE! You, me, the-stranger- sitting-on-a-park-bench-sipping-whisky-out-of-a-bottle. And, whatever higher-power you believe in (for me it's God) that is responsible for human existence, know that you, me, and the-stranger-sitting- on-a-park-bench-sipping-whisky-out-of-a-bottle, are equals. We are treated as equals. God, or that higher-power of sorts, created everyone as equals and no one is any more deserving of happiness over the other. The difference is entitlement. Jillian goes on to say that the world owes you nothing. You owe it to yourself.

This is where it hits home.

Generation Y or the Millennial Generation (1980-2000 children) think we are entitled to have our wants and desires just like that. Jillian reiterates that it does not work like this. You have to work for it. You have to earn it. As the saying goes, good things come to those who fucking go out and EARN it.  The Me Generation, yes I am included in this, gets stuck in the mind-set of: "I went to college and I should get 40 job offers. If YOU did the work in school and did the networking, pounded the pavement then, yes, ideally you should get the job. But, if you fail your way through college and don't do the work then NO you shouldn't." And, so here lies a conflict in today's economy. Jake, Jillian's radio producer, says this, "My friends that are just now graduating or have graduated in the last year or two did do the hard work, they did earn their diploma and everything; they are not entitled to a job right out of college, but they should at least be getting entry-level job positions in places that have mobility for them. Instead they are stuck at the cheesecake factory or the Starbucks and after a year or two they ask themselves, 'why am I still here?' 'why am I stuck here?' because I did do the work and I am getting the job the person with a high school diploma or GED is getting...Bachelor Degrees don't weigh as heavy as they use to in this economy when there aren't enough jobs to go around."

Oh...ahhhh... Ummm... Yo, what about...I want to interject when I realize I'd only be yabbering to myself and telling myself something I already know. And, that is what if you have a Master's Degree? Why am I still stuck at the ARC? Why haven't I gotten a better job to pay off my school debt? The answer is location...location...location! I'll tell you how much it blows when finances dictate your future. Well, what have we here, friends? Brooklyn has just identified the problem. What are you going to do about it? Please don't tell me you are going to do nothing...

I did do nothing for quite sometime because I am a part of the Me Generation (Generation Y) and I did work hard. I worked my butt off in high school and even harder in college, and I worked the hardest maintaining a 3.9 GPA in graduate school whilst working three jobs totaling 40 hours a week all the while researching, drafting, writing, presenting, crafting, and defending a 40 page theory paper and a 35 page screenplay in one semester.  I did network; I did send out one million and one resumes; I did go on job interview after job interview and experience rejection.  I let the rejection put a dagger in my heart and damage my soul. For eight miserable months of being unemployed I want to slit my wrists (figuratively speaking). After the 80th failed interview, I lock myself in my bedroom for two days and do nothing, but smoke bowl after bowl of marijuana, rent a bazillion DVDs and eat junk food until I barf my brains down the toilet.

Finally, after three days of feeling sorry for myself, I pick my butt off the bed, shower, sober up, dress in my NINES and hit the pavement. In one week I garner three job interviews. The jobs I apply for do not utilize my diplomas per se, but a job is a job. I have always said anything worse than having a crummy job is being unemployed (eight months of robbing Peter to pay Paul) gets old and so does asking the parents for money. And, so here I am.

July 2013. What am I doing to work toward my goals and self-fulfillment? I am saving money, taking care of debts, busting my can in the 'gym' four to five days per week, making a list of my needs, cancelling my wants so that I may live my life like a starving artist in an affordable metropolitan area in which I am surrounded by like-minded individuals whom will inspire, motivate, and accept me for me.

Now that my actions and my career goals are validated, Jillian accepts a caller. Some of these calls are good, some of them I'd like to slit my throat, and others well...I just laugh out loud until my guts swell with pain. This caller happens to be one of these callers.

24-year-old, Eaden, first explains to Jillian that each month when 'Aunt Flow' visits she has bad cramps for two or three days and suffers from "the residuals" known as the emotional aftermath and would rather stick a needle in her eye than do jumping jacks.  Jillian says, that's okay. Just as long as you do something. Eaden continues to explain that she likes to do yoga in this case. Okay, good.

Eaden wants to know when she's in a down-dog position and on her period if it will hurt her? Jillian picks up the phone and dials her partner, Heidi Rhoades because Heidi is a certified yoga works instructor. Heidi says that in her classes she is in fact told that a woman shouldn't do full inversions or hand stands while on her period.  It has something to do with the flow of energy, and no woman really wants anybody to know when she is bleeding like a stuck pig.

I am dying with laughter because I am sure I violate this policy one hundred million times when I actively participate in hot yoga, and I am unhurt and alive. "Unless your ovaries will fall out through your ears this is not a good enough reason to not do yoga," Jillian explains. "What's the worst that could happen? Her aura is going be effed. A bad day in LA traffic will do far more damage than her shock res. You'll be okay and keep doing what you're doing." The call ends. Just when I think my guts couldn't hurt any worse...

Janice and Jillian have the after discussion. I dang near pee my pants. Janice starts impersonating Brenda Vaccarro (1982) tampax ads in her deep, I-smoke-a-pack-of-cigarettes-per-day-for-20-years, raspy voice.

Okay, Jillian because Janice ought to know about the Diva Cup since she is Canadian and it's manufactured in Canada, but I am not surprised that Janice is uninformed. Welcome to the 21st-and-one-half-Century. Instead of using pads with a jock strap belt, or even God forbid, tampons with cardboard applicators, there is this thing called a Diva Cup. It's made of silicone and it saves from saturating the environment with feminine hygiene materials, not to mention, it saves on your pocketbook. Take a minute to Google Diva Cup and see for yourself. "It's time to make your period a happy period," if that's even possible. Oh, and STOP doing nothing and start doing something.