20190118.0430

I am perhaps late in commenting on millennial burnout, which seems to have been much in the news in the past few days (as of this writing, which is earlier than its publication, to be sure). I'll leave it to my readers to read others' words about such things; I do not need to rehearse them here as I move to offer something of my experience. And I do so knowing that I speak from several positions of privilege; I do not doubt that many people have it far harder than I because of factors utterly beyond their control and mine. I do not discount the ways of which I am aware I am, to borrow phrasing from the internet at large, playing on easy mode. But I am also a damned poor player, not doing well even in the lower difficulties, and I cannot claim to be a noob. Not at this point.
Because I occupy the positions I do, I find myself in a certain persistent tension that adds to the more explicit stresses of the current socioeconomic climate. That is, I do have the identified-as-persistent-across-generations stressors of trying to support a household, to which are added the more recent expectations of fatherhood (because there are differences in expectations of parenting between now and when I was growing up, at least for the socioeconomic group with which I identify and am identified), the specific demands of my jobs (yes, plural, and yes, stressful in particular ways because of the populations with which I work), and the prevailing local cultural expectations of how "real men" behave (several of which are good things, but many of which are pernicious and insidious despite their local dominance). I reiterate that I am not calling for any special treatment, simply reporting, if perhaps only in gloss, on my situation.
But I think there is something in the very act of reporting, of making the comment, that makes something of a difference with the issue. Dominant narratives assert that previous generations did not make so much of their problems, even when those problems were worse (as sometimes has been the case). That is, they shut their mouths and plodded onward, and if they said anything, it was either in situation or penitence or in state of inebriation. The healthiness of either option can be debated, of course, and issues of accuracy of recollection and thoroughness of recording have to be considered. Even so, the acknowledgement of difficulty or of pain is seen, at least in my specific "here," as being weakness, and weakness in that "here" is to be hidden, redressed, or ridiculed. The last is most likely, being easiest and most likely to allow others who are more successful in concealing things to feel virtuous for doing so.
I will not ask why it is so; I have an idea of an answer, flip as it may be. I will acknowledge that it is so, and that I have more thinking to do on the matter of how to negotiate the tension it introduces. Again, I know others have it worse than I; I do not deny it. But I also know that I have to deal with what is mine to handle, among which is this.