Gillian, when I put this comment parallel to some of your earlier articles about how you started your business while still living at home, here’s the shocking trend:
My god. You get it that if this is going to happen(gasp) it’s up to you.
One of the reasons I like your writing is that you return to themes like this regularly. I am not fond of Millenium bashing, any more than I am fond of OK Boomer, but I am deeply disturbed (as are you) by the trend you mention. I see people like this all over the world. I just returned from Ethiopia where extremely aggressive begging is an epidemic, as it is in certainly other countries where bad tourists manipulate kids for photos with candy and coins. I find it monumentally insulting when people try to extract limited funds from locals whose currencies are usually devalued against our Western currencies, and they have little of it to begin with, so that those tourists can do little more than live off the dole. In this case, the largess of strangers.
I can’t begin to countenance such behavior. That said, young people- mostly young people, pepper me all the time with demands to know how I “GET” to do adventure travel, how I “GET” to write for certain clients, how I “GET” to do what I do all over the world.
As though this is a perk or privilege someone handed me by virtue of having shown up with my hand out.
While it’s unfortunate that such people give competent, hard working and capable Millennials a very bad name, the problem is that there are enough of them so that the impression lingers.
Similar to how you developed your marketing business, Gillian, I GET to do what I do from four decades of hard fucking work. Learning to write exceptionally well. Learning to solve client problems. Educating myself. Earning a fucking living and learning to put money away. Learning to game the airline points systems with credit card purchases so that I rarely pay for a flight.
The only GET there is to this is that I GET off my ass and work for what I do. As do you.
It is deeply unfortunate that such people exist in the first place, but worse, the impression is that the Trump era spawned a parasitic class of travelers who, like him and his ilk, feel that they are By GOD above having to work for what they get.
I admit to having the following reaction to such cretins: FUCK. YOU.
Parasites. In the worst sense of the word. There is no excuse for such behavior. You want to live a dream, you can god damned well put the time and dime in to work for it.
Assholes. Just……assholes.
Another smart piece from you and thanks, GS.