Sorry for the Delay

Millennial. Ask anyone who isn’t one, and you’ll likely hear something along the lines of :

“Lazy, entitled job-hoppers due to participation trophies and bad parenting!”

“Hopeless wannabe entrepreneurs who live in their parent’s basement between rentals…”

“Selfish, inconsiderate phone addicts who lack genuine communication skills and need to get their priorities straight!”

More often than not, I sense this undertone at varying decimals from those who fall into the baby boomer generation. It has always felt ironic to me... Why do those within the age range of my parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, doctors, ELDERS have such a problem with my kind? Didn’t they have something to do with it? Why are they so bothered by our generational divide?

In the true millennial fashion, I needed to figure it out. And right then. So that’s what I did--I combined all my resources available via my own brain and phone, my most utilized and (often enmeshed) assets.

Okay, my only assets.

I started by asking myself who, in my life, has actually called me out for being a “millennial” in a way that was demeaning, mocking, etc?

Answer: An extremely narcissistic ex I briefly dated who was several years my senior, a horrifically toxic “coach” at my first corporate job that took full advantage of my youthful naivety and criminally underpaid me, and, well, anyone else who could take advantage of my lack of boundaries.

From there, I was able to pinpoint very discreet undertones of millennial disgust from just about everyone in my life that wasn’t of my generation. The most common complaint being my lack of communication skills for not answering phone calls and text messages at the lightning-fast speed they asked me to teach them.

Never once have those who are so frustrated by my poor phone etiquette and or baffled by my lack of social media engagement stopped to consider the reasons behind it.

They fail to consider that I, a January 1996 baby, was brought to life in a world of car phones, learned to walk in a world of disposable cameras, began to talk in a world of Yellow Pages, started to think in a world of Dial Up, then suddenly and without warning came of age in a world of everything. All the time.

Constant communication was not the coolest new gadget that drastically improved my life and my relationships. It wasn’t a social media platform that allowed me to reconnect with long lost friends. I never got a say in how much or how little I wanted to share, or with whom, or how often. Each cell phone generation and social media revolution was also a year of my adolescence.

I was never allowed to determine how much of each social tool l I preferred in my lifestyle, the dawn of each was at the peak of my most raw need for sociability and well, social survival. I had to see each platform through, roll with the motions, overextend my own social limitations because I knew how, everyone else did, and it was expected of me.

Flash forward a decade, I am still expected to overextend myself, because if I don’t, I’m selfish, inconsiderate, and have poor phone etiquette. When really, I have a say now, and I say it by not saying anything at all.

My point is, my common use of “sorry for the delay” is not due to my millennial selfishness or lack of priorities. I am not ignoring you.

Limiting the constant access to me that everyone in my life has grown accustomed to is no more than me leaving a voicemail box recording stating:

Hey, thanks for checking in. I am existing. Doing something, somewhere, for some time. Leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you when I can.