Traits of Generation X

A friend of mine created this brilliant piece of art.  I gave her a rough sketch of what I was hoping for, and she came back with something even cooler.  This piece is a sort of cross section of  the words that you will come across as you read about or hear about Generation X from books, blogs, or other media.   

I took photos of the piece from several different angles....

I took a lot of the words that have been bouncing around inside my head that I have run across as I have read about Gen X and gave them to the Gen X artist who created this piece. While not every word will describe every Gen Xer, many of these words describe a sort of collective personality that we have.

You can sort of connect the dots as you look at this description, so to speak - being latchkey kids made us independent, being misunderstood made us cynical.   

"Whatever" seems to be a word we are well known for saying a lot, so I gave her the list with whatever as the last word.  

"...fatalistic...hates fakeness...ill-defined...philosophical..."

While there are more words than this that can describe us, these are some of the more common ones you'll see.   

We were called slackers in our youth, but we don't hear that as much anymore - maybe because all the sudden people realized we were the ones doing all the hard work and being responsible?  I still use 'slacker' as a term of endearment for certain of my beloved Gen X friends.  

Thank you, Heidi for the work you put into this.   You are the perfect example of many of the words in this list: adaptable, creative, aesthetic, resourceful....

Art by: Heidi R.K.T.

For more samples of Heidi's art:

etsy.com/shop/Tristanandrose

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(c) 2014 - writing and photography by Chloe Koffas