On Gen Z ambition

Making your resolutions ain't easy!

The glitter’s been swept up. What now? I don’t make resolutions because they tend to be tools for my OCD. She loves when I set a goal, especially if that goal is highly-specific, and achieving it will get in the way of all my necessary tasks. Still, my recent work ethic era has me thinking.

I’ve always had ambitions, but I liked keeping them to myself. I didn’t want people knowing that I had things I wanted to do and be. I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life, but I spent years saying “I’m not sure!” when people asked. People, especially unhappy adults, love telling you what you shouldn’t do if you want a career. I didn’t really care to hear these pieces of advice, because I wanted to stay delusional. And I have!

In the early days of my ambition, I wanted to be a Y2K career woman. I wanted an office and lots of money and I wanted to be great at corporate speak and meetings and all that boring stuff. I worked in places like this, and I hated it. All of it felt so impersonal; they were all working towards some vague monetary, capitalist goal that I couldn’t really understand. So my capitalist ambitions faded, as with many of my Gen Z contemporaries.

Our generation gained a reputation for being apathetic, lazy, and without any ambition to speak of. One could blame the fact that we were raised in a time when all political misbehavings and international catastrophes are being fed to us constantly through tiny screens that we carry with us at all times. But who’s to say, really? Still, I think we’re a lot more hard-working than we get credit for. The issue is that we have a lot of history to work with.

We know all about the Great Depression and the nuclear family and the recession (in fact, we were there for the recession; impressionable kids being told they could be anything they wanted to be, within reason). Millennials may have squandered their money on avocados, but we aren’t in all that better of a position. We have thousands of dollars of debt, none of us can buy a concert ticket, let alone a house.

The thing is, I want lots of things, the same things I wanted when I was a child and before I knew that nobody has any money (oh, other than the ruling class, of course). I want a successful career in the arts, I want to live in my big city, I want to go out to nice restaurants and travel the world and give my money to people that need it. But how does one achieve that without being, for lack of a better word, a capitalist whore?

I spent quite a long time being unemployed, and I loved it! I sat at home and went to lunch and very quickly ran out of money. I eat beans with tomato sauce for lunch and dinner. I started writing and going to networking things and somewhere along the way I started to crave work. And somewhere along the way after that, I started to crave work that I care about. For the first time in my twenties, I feel motivated and ambitious and I want to make the life I want for myself.

I think this is happening with a lot of Gen Zers right now. The sheen of “unprecedented times” has worn off, and we’re realizing that things are not going to be how they were for our predecessors. We have to make an effort to be happy, and that’s okay. We can fight facism and create art and still have fun! We’re allowed to want things, it doesn’t mean we’re stupid.

Happy New Year! So grateful to all of you for reading my little articles and writing such great ones of your own. Love ya!