Keep on, Keepin' on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4mkRwkQRoQ


I graduated from High School in 1980, the same year FAME hit the movie theaters. Irene Cara sang the title song and this song above: Out Here On My Own. This song still finds me when I'm needing to pick myself up. It's a melancholy song and yet ultimately optimistic, much like me.

I'm very much a person of my time. My childhood was filled with assassinations, divorces, and war being broadcast live. It was also filled with a kind of independence that led to developing an imagination, being resourceful and trusting your abilities that modern youth seem to develop much later. Where as my generation had perhaps the least attentive parents, this current generation has helicopter or micro-managing parents. Both parents work, and have to do so.

The 70's was the end of the "boom", where inflation exceed the cost of living and it's never caught up. Feminism was a convenient movement; as we all had to work. Divorces became more common in the 70's. My parents were earlier, the late 60's. My daughter says she's the only one of her friends that has two generations of divorce: grandparents and parents.

This current generation has grown up with a war that surpasses Vietnam in duration (Afghanistan was 13.2 years, Vietnam 10.7), only they couldn't watch it on the nightly news, it was censored. The chess match wars of a 100 years ago, became guerrilla wars, and now they are the most fragmented of all: terrorist acts of system disruption.

My generation is supposedly the tail end of the Boomers. However, I don't feel that definition fits. We're the first generation to grow up with the pill and Roe vs Wade. The last generation to be teenagers before AIDS/HIV hit. The last generation to experiment with drugs and sex before we really we became the first generation to be dying from them in large numbers.

If anything, sex was too easy and too early when we were young and had us making adult choices young. Yet sex in the media and arts seemed to be more satirical, campy and self-conscious. Now it's violent, dangerous and random. It permeates all of society in a relentless fashion. Try buying an outfit or swim suit for a girl over the age of 6 that doesn't look trampy. It's tough. Our generation started the sex-postive movement, post AIDS and Take-Back-The-Night rallies. We tried to own it as females from a place of power and something went topsy-turvy.

We were the make-upless generation. We made fun of girls that wore make up, until Punk Rock hit and then we all (boys and girls) wore it as a form of rebellion. We were the generation that started to neutralize and de-gender our peers. We used the word "guys" to mean everyone. It was very confusing to our parents, but now it's standardly used that way. I've not gone as far as calling young girls "buddy", but the generation after me does that now.

We were the last generation to really love road trips. The romantic notion of the 50's Route 66 and Ricky & Lucy w/the Long Long Trailor, followed by the advent Travels with Charlie ala Steinbeck, and of course, the VW bus with likes of Ken Kesey. Many of  my friends and relatives went on quests, it was natural to want to get a license asap! Now kids aren't eager to jump on the road. So much fear and expense surrounds the highways and byways of modern America that it doesn't seem to them to be a rite of passage, to be an adventuresome youth who must "Go West, Young Man"! No, they are content to stay close and comfy. The searching gene that brought most of our ancestors here is fading.

I'm still on a quest. I'm a hippie-chick, mother, daughter, sister and friend who likes to explore life, the planet and its inhabitants. As I've suggested, ad nauseam, a lover to share the adventure would be ideal. But for a majority of my life I've felt the way this song still makes me feel. That I'm alone, strong, perpetually reaching for a new rising star, and it would be nice to have some one to be there for me, and me alone; but right here, right now, and most of my life: I'm Out Here On My Own.
I do think my generation may be the largest single middle-aged generation ever, yet, I feel fine, mind you. You see, in the words of U2, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For......but one day I hope to find that I get what I need. 

Good Night, Keep on Trucking', G'night!








"Out Here On My Own"

Sometimes I wonder
Where I've been
Who I am, do I fit in?
Make-believing is hard alone
Out here, on my own

We're always proving
Who we are
Always reaching
For that rising star
To guide me far
And shine me home
Out here on my own

When I'm down and feeling blue
I close my eyes so I can be with you
Oh, baby, be strong for me
Baby, belong to me
Help me through
Help me need you

Until the morning sun appears
Making light of all my fears
I dry the tears I've never shown
out here on my own

But when I'm down and feeling blue
I close my eyes so I can be with you
Oh, baby, be strong for me
Baby, belong to me
Help me through
Help me need you

Sometimes I wonder
Where I've been
Who I am, do I fit in?
I may not win
But I can't be thrown
Out here on my own
Out here
On my own