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Caught between Boomers who made history and Millennials who think history can be made swipe after swipe, you will find Gen X.

What prompted this thought?

While kneading dough for the first time I was watching the news on t.v. I rarely watch the news because my cell phone keeps me up to date on breaking news every day. Those flashes on my cell phone of two bit sentences don’t keep me up to date on what’s going on locally.

Here we go again, here was this newscaster talking about boomers and millennials on t.v.

I am not one to follow trends. It takes a while before I start using new buzz words or take on new categories for people, places, or things. I don’t want my view of the world to be narrowed or manipulated.

The choices in my life shouldn’t change every couple of months because the media puts it out there 24 seven.

I tend to wait to see what the scenarios are developing into before getting on the band wagon like everybody else. I need to understand the why of what’s going on before focusing my attention on new lingo.

I am too busy trying to make things happen then to allow the media or social media to steal any more of my time than they already have.

While following this new update on Boomers and Millennials, GenX was not part of the dialogue, not even once. I waited and watched the segment until the end, not one mention.

I had only one loaf pan and one sheet pan to split the dough into. I looked down after making the separation and one dough was fitted into the loaf pan like a rigid conformist Boomer who had had enough of challenging the establishment. The dough on the sheet pan was spread too thin like a so woke and informed millennial with a know it all cause I can get it at my fingertips bravado.

For those of you like myself who had not done so, try baking some bread to understand that the process takes time. Waiting on dough to rise one hour then another, well it will try your patience. Only those who make a living from baking and those who are committed to baking from scratch can fully appreciate the wait. Millennials, try to understand that before things happen they are planned beforehand. Think about what a programmer does. Life is much the same way. As they say, the matrix is real.

I wondered what a Gen X loaf of bread looked like? Maybe we’re not loaves at all. Just a hot popover, quick and easy to eat, so easily dismissed.

Gen X’ers are at a time in their lives where everything is on review.

No, not a mid-life crisis. Wasn’t that a Boomer trait? We are sort of looking back and reevaluating what we’ve accomplished. What to toss and what to keep. It’s like the wardrobe that’s not working anymore; much less does it fit like it use to?

The internet with its watered and stripped down resources is not a place that will produce deep thinkers. As a oh my do we have to go there, some Gen X’ers can still remember The Dewey Decimal System where you had to dig for information and go through volumes of books to get a grasp of true content. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand that for some professions, intense training is still the norm. What I am talking about are blurbs of comments about this or that being vomited at the speed of light. Who can keep up?

I don’t want to engage in this rapid fired dialogue anymore. It’s not worth it to try to keep up with what everyone is saying or doing.

Just like the baking of bread you got to put in the time to get it right. It’s a no brainer to buy bread from a store.

In this ready made info wars society, it’s who can engage the public for the longest that’s causing a zombified existence for most.

You have to do your own thinking. No one should hijack that space in your brain where you see the world as it is and not a world that’s overexplained or distorted. You have to get to the root of the agenda of who’s speaking.

We the Gen X’ers have taken risks. Failure comes and successes come as well. We’ve come to see a fair amount of people die much like the Boomers. Not to say that millenials haven’t had their share of tragic losses. It’s not the famous people who die that are only important to notice.

Life for more and more Gen X’ers is lived more cautiously. We don’t believe everything we hear and we cannot be easily manipulated. We were once there, being thought of only as a market to target. We’ve also come to understand that a profile picture and selfies are empty time wasters. It’s alright to take pictures, but really do so many of them have to be about you?

Spiritually, you call that worshipping yourself.

Much like generations past, those ahead of us (boomers) have conquered hardships that we’ve all benefited from and those behind us (millennials) should understand that life with community and family is better than a hand held device of constant info.

Boomers and Gen X’ers can still remember a time when you came home after a day out and about in the world to catch up with the rest of the world. You know, millennials that archaic dinosaur, the t.v. which was too big to take with us everywhere we went. I do remember though those boom boxes of music being played on one shoulder in the “hood.”

Don’t bench Gen X’ers just yet, we have more firsts to achieve, much like my baking of bread.

Gen Z we hope you break old ground by being determined not to live life behind a screen of ready made info, but in real time much like days past.

Regine Baptiste

P.S. I really enjoyed eating the artisanal looking flat bread more than the one baked in the loaf pan.

Copyright May, 2019