Well, doesn't it? You work faithfully for years and just as you are close to retirement, some hotshot with an MBA decides that you are "too old" (they won't say that)--so they say you are "too slow" or you are not in synch with the new corporate goal statement. So, you are out of work. And now you get to spend down your 401K while you get turned down for job after job.
And in this economy, your home is worthless--you borrowed away your equity working on that late-in-life graduate degree that the company had promised to pay for, but cut the benefit because of "financial strains." Or maybe it was just to support your kids in some school that charges an arm and a leg for them to attend classes taught by graduate students while the professors are doing arcane research or working for some corporate money machine to support educational endowments. [ I have taught in several graduate programs, but there was too little teaching and too much politicking.] And tens of thousands of dollars later, your children graduate only to be told they need to invest another 30K in an MBA just to get a job working at a fast food chain.
Hell, even if you have one of those "in-demand" skills, they would rather pay a recent graduate than pay you for what your experience deserves. And we know those young kids aren't likely to living on a steady diet of Lipitor which drives up the company health insurance premiums. Or maybe now that you are almost sixty, you can't move as quickly as we could when we were twenty?
But it isn't just us Baby Boomers who are struggling with this age thing. Everyday, someone tells the twenty-something generation the same thing they told me 40 years ago: "You don't have enough experience!" Well, how are they to get experience if someone won't give them a chance? Even with specialized training, they don't have "experience." Well, of course not, they just got out of school!
I am not angry about being old. I am angry about being defined by age. Some of us are "in- between" which really sucks. We are too old to be in demand by the marketplace and too young to retire. Well, who can afford to retire anyway! And, in the middle of this feeble economy, many of us find ourselves out of out of work. How many others of us are there? The company where I worked almost a decade laid off 12,000 of us in one day!
You may not be out of work yet--that is just what my "in-between" years are like.
If you ask me, the real culprit is age. So, I my new career is to RAGE AGAINST AGE. I am taking on age head-on!
- Age is not going to beat me down.
- Age will not keep me from enjoying life.
- Age will not keep me in ill-health.
- Age will not keep me from dreaming big dreams.
- Age will not keep me from finding meaning in my daily life.
- Age will not rob me of another day.
- Age will not dim my hope.
- I am at war against age.
- I declare age to be irrelevant.
- Age is not my god.
So rage with me here.
RAGE AGAINST AGE
Rage against your age.
Maybe your "age-rage" is because you are too young.
Join me in R-A-G-I-N-G here.
Just avoid attacking other people specifically (slander), attacking groups (racism), or attacking opinion (no politics please)!
There is plenty to rage about without being intolerant or hateful.
Join me in a DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM AGE.
Tell us how you RAGE AGAINST AGE!
Here is what I am doing:
I always wanted to play guitar in a rock band. I did in high school--didn't everyone? Anyway, I got together with some other Baby Boomers a while back and we started a band.
You know what we called it? Rage Against Age
We thought we would just play in a basement on weekends, but we found that making music together made age irrelevant for us. We found that playing music from the British Invasion to Woodstock made us feel young again. And now, we are going public, playing in bars and restaurants and having the time of our lives.
So, if you want to become a RAGER with me, come back here and tell me how you are RAGING AGAINST AGE.
Rage against your age.
Maybe your "age-rage" is because you are too young.
Join me in R-A-G-I-N-G here.
Just avoid attacking other people specifically (slander), attacking groups (racism), or attacking opinion (no politics please)!
There is plenty to rage about without being intolerant or hateful.
Join me in a DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM AGE.
Tell us how you RAGE AGAINST AGE!
Here is what I am doing:
I always wanted to play guitar in a rock band. I did in high school--didn't everyone? Anyway, I got together with some other Baby Boomers a while back and we started a band.
You know what we called it? Rage Against Age
We thought we would just play in a basement on weekends, but we found that making music together made age irrelevant for us. We found that playing music from the British Invasion to Woodstock made us feel young again. And now, we are going public, playing in bars and restaurants and having the time of our lives.
So, if you want to become a RAGER with me, come back here and tell me how you are RAGING AGAINST AGE.
