Everyone I knew growing up, I have made friends with in my travels, and everyone I work with that falls under the GenX category has clinical anxiety. Some of us don’t go for treatments, as we are hard chiseled from being latchkey kids, babysitters for younger siblings since we were too young to be on our own, and for us that were the oldest, in charge of things such as cleaning, cooking, and taking care of younger siblings. We were the generation that was the bridge from mothers staying at home with their families to families with both parents working. In elementary school, in the late 70s to early ’80s, I was jealous of the kids that went to after-school programs. There were 2 that the other students talked of. One was a single woman on the street the school was on that watched about half a dozen kids. The other was a day car that had a green school bus. It had an incredible front yard with old-school wood and metal play equipment. In a school of 360+, one school bus, not even halfway full, was all that was needed to take the few kids needing daycare to their program after school.

A few years ago, I worked as an office manager at the home office of a small chain of daycare centers, four strong. Whereas forty years earlier, there was only a hand full of kids needing daycare, we coordinated with the town’s school buses and had kids dropped directly off at our centers. Some buses were full of our kids. Such a difference. And such a massive difference in what these daycare centers offer. It is a wonderland for the kids to look forward to.

As GenXers get older, we realize how we were the forefathers of this movement, where kids are allowed to have fun with many different activities to keep them occupied. And what has become of us GenXers? While we were responsible for keeping our families together as children, that role hasn’t changed as adults. We are now the ushers of these kids. Although I slowly watch the friends I grew up with, one by one, first having babies and now having grandkids, we still support the whole family. This is what leads to anxiety for us. We feel guilty taking time just for us. And as we are either in our 50s or fast approaching that milestone, we find we don’t know how to relax. We feel, rightfully so for many of us, that we are the bones of the family, and if we don’t constantly support our family and loved ones, it will all collapse. We carry the weight of our parents, our generation, and the ages after us all on our shoulders. So what can we do about it? Well, here is the sticky wicket. Anxiety leads to procrastination.

Procrastination is like an illness. You don’t want to feel this way but you must ride it out. After years of baby boomer parents and teachers calling us lazy for leaving unpleasant tasks til the last possible second, we believe it, at least on some psychological level. And yet, everyone procrastinates. Why else would there be so many saying about procrastination? While GenX was growing up, anything less than perfection was not good enough, at least for a lot of us, either from home or from school, or a combination of both. These parents and teachers lived through wars, overcrowding due to the baby boom, and an explosion of change in the world. They thought they were doing best, just as our generation thinks we have done best with the next generation. Hopefully, we will be correct.

So, why exactly is a writer talking about anxiety? Well, pressure leads to procrastination, which leads to feeling lazy and just not getting what we want to accomplish, whether it is cleaning out a closet, putting up a new picture, setting up a budget, or in my case, writing.

I wrote about my novel, currently under construction, in my first blog post. I haven’t written more due to procrastination. When you have a passion, hours melt away once you get involved with it. I have lost many hours in the pursuit of the written word. As I get older, I hate to lose one day of my weekend. I am unsure if it is because I need as much rest as possible to get through 5 days or if I am tired from the years of carrying so much weight on my back. In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter.

So I am making the commitment to you, dear reader, that at least once a week, I will blog to you, let you know where I am on my journey, and maybe give you more insights into the solitary and not-so-solitary life of a writer. And to my GenX family, we are all family; we all have each other’s back, and damn, I miss my big hair!