I was born in the 1970s.
I’m Generation X.
And I’m proud to be one.
We are the original latchkey kids.
The ones who walked home from school
with a house key around our necks
and a note on the counter that said,
“Dinner’s in the fridge.”
We learned independence early—
because we had to.
Our parents were working, divorcing,
or just doing their own thing.
So we figured things out on our own—
quietly, creatively, and with grit.
We were raised on three TV channels,
Saturday morning cartoons,
and streetlights as curfews.
We played outside until
the dusk buzzed us home.
We are the mixtape makers.
The Walkman warriors.
The ones who rewound VHS tapes,
recorded songs off the radio,
and waited weeks for film
to be developed.
We grew up with
Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street,
Schoolhouse Rock,
The Brady Bunch, The Muppets,
and Soul Train.
We also watched
the Berlin Wall fall,
the Challenger explode,
and MTV actually play music.
We watched the world change, fast.
We saw the end of the Vietnam War.
Lived through the Cold War,
the crack epidemic,
“Just Say No” campaigns,
and the AIDS crisis.
We’ve seen technology evolve
from Atari to AI.
We danced to vinyl,
then cassettes,
then CDs—
memorizing lyrics
long before Google could help.
We survived rotary phones,
busy signals,
floppy disks,
and dial-up modems.
We printed pixelated banners
on dot matrix printers
that took all afternoon.
We learned to code, just to
change our MySpace page.
We were the last generation
to grow up without the internet
and the first to raise kids
in a world that never shuts off.
We lived before likes, hashtags,
and constant comparison.
Privacy was real.
Mistakes were our own,
not viral content.
We straddle two worlds:
Analog and digital.
Pay phones and smartphones.
Common sense and constant scroll.
We entered adulthood
through recessions,
layoffs,
downsizing,
and broken promises—
but we kept going.
We never expected life to be easy—
just real.
We were told to keep our heads down
and get to work.
No hand-holding.
No “safe spaces.”
Just figure it out.
And we did.
We’ve seen empires fall,
systems fail,
ideals shift—
but we’re still here.
We’ve been raising families,
caring for aging parents,
and learning how to feel
in a world that told us
to toughen up.
We are the quiet rebels.
The underdogs.
The skeptics who still hope.
We’ve seen enough to question everything
but we still believe in doing better.
In showing up.
In authenticity
over image.
We’re breaking cycles.
Drinking water.
Going to therapy.
Healing.
Still raising hell
when it matters.
We are Generation X.
The quiet force.
The resilient bridge
between Boomers and Millennials,
old school and what’s next.
We’re not trying to go back.
We’re building forward—
with wisdom,
wit, and
weathered hearts.
We are Generation X.
And we’ve got this.
