girls: i am one.

I know I am behind the times, but I finally got around to borrowing the first season of Girls from the library this week. For some reason the show completely fell off the face of the planet, or at least my circles of the internet, after the first season, but I didn't forget!

For the uninitiated, Girls is a show on HBO created by a 20-something young woman about the lives of four 20-something young women living in New York. It made quite a splash last year when it first came out, with general sentiment recognizing the show as revolutionary, the defining piece of television of our generation, Gen Y, the infamous Millennials. At least that's what I heard.

So, I thought, I'd better watch this. I meant to blog about it a year ago, when episode 4 was the latest. I watched episode 1 and was skeptical; thought, well, maybe I just have to get into it, and watched episode 2; was still skeptical; watched the first half of episode 3 because I felt I should be able to talk about the show that was sweeping the nation and couldn't finish it. I described it as painful. I still think, having watched the whole season, it is uncomfortably oversexed, over-the-top dysfunctional, overdramatic. But I can't hate it as much as I did originally.

My friends were asking me if I'd seen it, and recommending that I watch it. "Oh, it doesn't get good until episode 4," they'd say, when I told them where I'd stopped. My boss came in one morning raving about how this show is the most brilliant exposé of the psychology and experiences of American 24-year-olds (a well-represented demographic in our office).

The one real conversation I had about the show was with T, a male friend from my freshman dorm. We took a course series together in the history of Western thought, philosophy and literature. The turning point in my opinion of the show was when he said:

I see it more as a tale of disconnect. In a society more connected than ever, a lot of people who grew up with infinite amounts of communication feel more disconnected from themselves and others than ever.

He said he appreciates that the show addresses the confusion of being a young adult, one of those who grew up being told that we could do anything, be anything; one of those who graduated into a scene of general panic at the economic and social crises facing us every time we open our eyes. One of those who followed our passions, only to suddenly realize that our passions will not pay the bills and might not even sustain us emotionally...

Or one who grew up with so many options that we don't even have passions anymore. NPR did a story last week on an Ivy League graduate in his early 20s who is looking for his life's calling -- so far in vain. He doesn't even know what he wants to do.

The fact that Max and other young college graduates can even entertain this question — "What is my passion?" — is a new conundrum, and still a luxury not everybody enjoys. Yet, Tyler recently told me, it is "a central question of our time."

The world is changing. Of course it is. There is this to consider, and the fact that each new generation does have to come up with new solutions to old problems, and solutions to problems that didn't exist before, or at least hadn't come to light.

But I'm not convinced that past generations, when the bulk of them were in their 20s, didn't face the same hot hatred from the older generations who felt their seats contested. It's just that now, we read about it every damn day on the internet.

And here's one way I don't mind being lumped in with the inane, overdramatized bullshit millennial myth perpetuated in shows like Girls or, better yet, 2 Broke Girls: we are sick of being talked about! The marketers marketing to us are missing the point. As are the churches preaching to us. And the managers writing treatises about how to manage millennials. And the executives writing angry blog posts about why you shouldn't trust a 23-year-old with your company's social media, just because (s)he grew up with the internet. And then there are the articles, like the one in the New York Times recently which I can't find but was summarized to me roughly thus: "They hate this, they hate this, they suck at this... but they're going to change the world!"

I just want to go about my business. Yeah, maybe it would be cool to change the world, at least in some small way. I can think of a few things that could use a change. Maybe I am super self-centered, like all millennials supposedly are, because I am so concerned with getting my feet under me. Maybe what I have learned about having functional relationships is minimal compared to what I will know by the time I am 50 -- just by virtue of being alive longer and having had a lot of experiences with different kinds of relationships.

Yes, I am concerned about my career, partially because I have to pay rent and stuff, and because I now have a sharpening view down the road to when I will no longer be the only person depending on that career. But I am also concerned about my career because I am obsessed with doing good work, and learning things, and achieving goals. Particularly when doing so comes with the privilege of being included in a team of really interesting, smart and capable people who have experiences already that I will never be able to have because I am me and they are them.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, exactly. I guess it boils down to this: we are young. I think sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I am young! I have my whole life ahead of me! There is so much to do and to learn!

But really, Girls and the daily diatribes against "my generation" just doesn't really do it for me. Fancy that.