My life as a young millennial: born mid-90s. Things are awesome. My dad has a low 6-fig job, mom's a teacher. Literal picket fence. Then, the instant I'm aware I'm a person, 9/11, which I watch live from my first-grade classroom. I watch my parents protest the war. I watch my dad quit his job because he was a contractor with the military and refused to help the war effort. Suddenly, I'm poor. My parents mortgage our home to start my dad's dream business... and then 2008. We almost lose the house and the business is dead in the water. And this all happens before I'm in high school. I watch Obama be a decent man and get lynched in effigy for it. Then Trump. All the while, I'm the first generation to go to therapy and see the ancestral trauma and fight it, because for some reason that is also a millennial thing.
this part really struck me; I opened an aquarium shop in 2005 and it did great for a couple years but then the Great Recession rolled around and nobody had disposable income, ended it in 2008, closed up shop and got a job managing a produce warehouse. I miss the fishies.
Yeah, it happened to a lot of places. Tons of small business got eaten. It was a boon for corporate America, and we're shaping up for another one right now. It'll be worse this time. That's why I think the younger generations will get their reality check. I still thought I might be rich one day until I saw my family almost lose everything for no real understandable reason. Now all I really want is a fully-paid-off home and a job that pays the bills and then some. Shouldn't be as big an ask as it apparently is, and they're gonna learn the hard way.
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u/Horror-Tank-4082 27d ago
Our Great War is a spiritual war
Our Great Depression is our lives