Life happens in the gray

from an old scrapbook (or what’s it called now—junk journal? art journal?)

I grew up with a whole generation labeled as slackers. If you’re Gen X like me, you probably remember this. We were the ones who were supposedly unmotivated, cynical, and just hanging out in parking lots, drinking beer and listening to grunge music instead of preparing for our futures.

Which is wild, because have you met us? We were latchkey kids raising ourselves, figuring out life with minimal adult supervision, and learning how to be independent way before it was trendy to call it “free-range parenting.” And yet, somehow, we got stuck with the reputation of being the ones who didn’t care.