Comments on: The mid-twenties “Referendum”

By: iskid2astop

iskid2astop — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:44:11 +0000

While I’m not quite part of the 20-something crowd, I am part of another, sometimes just as stressed out crowd. The over-achieving high-schoolers. Everyone talks about their trip overseas, and their choir concert, their trip to the Capital, where they met some bigwig, and similar things. Cars are compared, clothes, friends, very similar to the situation you are describing. It starts early.

By: jjkaye

jjkaye — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:40:14 +0000

I experienced this phenomenon firsthand this weekend at a get-together with a number of people from college. By now, we’re all several years out of undergrad and the careers vary from bankers, soon-to-be lawyers, real estate investors, etc. I’m the odd man out in this instance as the lowly member of the “creative class”, a web designer.

Since it had been some time since we had all gotten together, there was a bit of catch up as far as where everyone was at career wise. What I found more interesting than everyone talking about their own career, was what others were saying about everyone else.

Several times people would come up to me and give their opinion on how much money other people were making. This was all news to me since I never had “the money” discussion with any of those individuals directly.

More often than not it was usually resentment or contempt that was associated with the knowledge of how much our friends were making. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth since we were supposed to be friends.

By: Michael Roston

Michael Roston — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:12:51 +0000

I think a lot of this is made worse when you’re working in the world of writing, especially in our online era, like us. I mean, think of it this way: you probably know quite a few people who are making low-six figures as attorneys, but it’s rare that you’ll ever hear them tell you about something interesting they did at work that day (because most young attorneys do stiflingly boring work). So while you envy what they have, perhaps, you probably don’t envy what they do.

Compare to being in this online writerly world. Everyday you see someone you know and think “Oh, I wish I worked there,” or “Oh, I wish I had written that.”

I think the one upside to this is the moments when you find yourself looking at a friend’s byline thinking to yourself, “Man, I’m glad I don’t have to work there writing THAT.”