I am a quintessential Gen Xer. I have been blogging about Generation X for over a decade. I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area. My first degree was in theology, and my second one was in law. I'm a state of California certified law enforcement/emergency/hospital chaplain. I'm also currently in school to be a grant writer. I'm raising a Generation Z daughter who shows me love and light every day and I am passing on to her all the good things from those Gen X growing up years – from skee ball to School House Rock. I go on journeys around America to write about and photograph places from monuments to memorials which are deeply significant to the Gen X experience. I'm fascinated by history, generational theory and the pop culture that influenced our formative years.
I was a teenager of the Grunge Era. I saw some of the greatest bands of that time live from the front row, and was a battle-born contender of the mosh pits. I came of age right as the culture history of Gen X pivoted. As a high school freshman, I could see the influence of first-wave Generation X culture as upperclassmen wearing Van Halen tee shirts passed me by in the hallways. Then, a couple of years later, the pop culture of second-wave Gen X took over and friends wearing Pearl Jam tee shirts would wave to me from down the hall. While The Breakfast Club set the tone for my earlier high school years, Singles set the tone for the later ones. It was in my Gen X preteen and teenage years when my Millennial siblings were born. My brother works for Google, a company that makes this blog possible, and my sister is a pediatric cardiologist who takes care of the hearts of the children of the youngest generations (Gen Z and Generation Alpha). I am so proud of them both.
I was a child of the Cold War. Most of my growing up years took place during the Reagan Administration when it was supposed to be "Morning In America", though I don't remember it ever feeling that way. A portion of my elementary school years were spent in Tornado Alley, so our safety drills doubled as nuclear drills. I was deeply affected by the death of Samantha Smith, a Gen X ambassador for understanding and reconciliation during that time. Near the end of the Cold War, I watched the January 1986 Challenger Disaster happen live from a classroom in my elementary along with millions of other Gen Xers. I will never forget the sting of losing all seven of my heroes in the same moment. A lifetime later, I found out that my father was one of the people who worked at NASA to ensure a disaster like that would never happen again. This was an important part of my journey of intergenerational forgiveness.
I was born on a US Air Force Base soon after the Vietnam War came to an end. My earliest memories include watching New Zoo Revue and looking through my Bicentennial View Master at Sigmund and the Sea Monsters 3D reels. I remember playing with Fisher-Price Little People and mini Muppet Show characters in a metal dollhouse made in a 1950's architectural style even though the post-war 'golden years' had long since departed by the time I came into the world.
What I could not know as a toddler learning to walk on shag carpet was how all the boom and bust that accompanied the transition to the new millennium would affect my life, from the cities and towns I lived in to the jobs I would work. During the height of the Oil Boom of the early 1980's, I was learning to fly a private plane just as the training wheels were coming off my bike – I knew that this, together with the Cadillac in our garage and the caviar in our fridge were empty status symbols of the time. When the mid-80's bust came, I remember newly jobless people leaving town as fast as possible. I remember the anxiety I felt standing on the main street of my small desert town on the Texas-New Mexico border, grappling with recession and poverty, where wealth evaporated like morning dew. The 1980's taught me to hold everything I own loosely and that materialism is hollow. The 1990's continued to reveal the importance of turning away from all that had gone wrong in society in the previous decades. I eventually learned to not get pulled so far down into 90's nihilistic thinking that I would lose all hope. Because sometimes all we have is hope.
Of cassette tapes I popped into my Walkman as a kid, U2's The Joshua Tree is the one I listened to the most. When I got my first CD player, U2's Rattle and Hum is the CD I listened to the most. After all these years, they are still my favorite band.
A few of the things I like:
Good coffee, Route 66, history, theology, symmetry, chocolate, quantum physics, desert sunsets, spiritual conversation, photography, social theory, paradigm shifts, vintage Gen X stuff/retro pop culture, and quirkiness.
contact: genxpixels(at)gmail
(c) 2011- 2021 Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved
I was a child of the Cold War. Most of my growing up years took place during the Reagan Administration when it was supposed to be "Morning In America", though I don't remember it ever feeling that way. A portion of my elementary school years were spent in Tornado Alley, so our safety drills doubled as nuclear drills. I was deeply affected by the death of Samantha Smith, a Gen X ambassador for understanding and reconciliation during that time. Near the end of the Cold War, I watched the January 1986 Challenger Disaster happen live from a classroom in my elementary along with millions of other Gen Xers. I will never forget the sting of losing all seven of my heroes in the same moment. A lifetime later, I found out that my father was one of the people who worked at NASA to ensure a disaster like that would never happen again. This was an important part of my journey of intergenerational forgiveness.
I was born on a US Air Force Base soon after the Vietnam War came to an end. My earliest memories include watching New Zoo Revue and looking through my Bicentennial View Master at Sigmund and the Sea Monsters 3D reels. I remember playing with Fisher-Price Little People and mini Muppet Show characters in a metal dollhouse made in a 1950's architectural style even though the post-war 'golden years' had long since departed by the time I came into the world.
What I could not know as a toddler learning to walk on shag carpet was how all the boom and bust that accompanied the transition to the new millennium would affect my life, from the cities and towns I lived in to the jobs I would work. During the height of the Oil Boom of the early 1980's, I was learning to fly a private plane just as the training wheels were coming off my bike – I knew that this, together with the Cadillac in our garage and the caviar in our fridge were empty status symbols of the time. When the mid-80's bust came, I remember newly jobless people leaving town as fast as possible. I remember the anxiety I felt standing on the main street of my small desert town on the Texas-New Mexico border, grappling with recession and poverty, where wealth evaporated like morning dew. The 1980's taught me to hold everything I own loosely and that materialism is hollow. The 1990's continued to reveal the importance of turning away from all that had gone wrong in society in the previous decades. I eventually learned to not get pulled so far down into 90's nihilistic thinking that I would lose all hope. Because sometimes all we have is hope.
Of cassette tapes I popped into my Walkman as a kid, U2's The Joshua Tree is the one I listened to the most. When I got my first CD player, U2's Rattle and Hum is the CD I listened to the most. After all these years, they are still my favorite band.
And I've got a story to tell.
My spiritual journey has been stitched together with felt, stained glass, incense, icons, and pixels. This path began with learning about the Gospel on a flannelgraph in my preschool days to studying the world's religions in my college days. I have sought spiritual direction from Catholic nuns and sensed the presence of God as I looked upon the giant stained glass windows of Paris' Notre Dame. I have been a hospital chaplain and I have done relief work in Mexico. I worked in Ireland as a camp counselor during the summer of 1999, at the start of a truce with 400 years of religious history depending on it. I have attended liturgy with Orthodox monks who, naturally, had once been the counterculture punks of Generation X.
My spiritual journey has been stitched together with felt, stained glass, incense, icons, and pixels. This path began with learning about the Gospel on a flannelgraph in my preschool days to studying the world's religions in my college days. I have sought spiritual direction from Catholic nuns and sensed the presence of God as I looked upon the giant stained glass windows of Paris' Notre Dame. I have been a hospital chaplain and I have done relief work in Mexico. I worked in Ireland as a camp counselor during the summer of 1999, at the start of a truce with 400 years of religious history depending on it. I have attended liturgy with Orthodox monks who, naturally, had once been the counterculture punks of Generation X.
These days, I value every part of that journey which has led me right back where I started as an ecumenical Christian. I love the work and writing of Rachel Held Evans, Madeleine L'Engle, Richard Rohr, and Rob Bell. The pandemic gave me the opportunity to become an interfaith, work from home chaplain. My first focus is to give counsel to people who experienced comas and near death experiences as a result of covid. In addition, I give spiritual direction/mentoring to Gen Xers, and sometimes to people from other generations as well, and I learn so much from others in the process. Sometimes, when covering a specific topic in the process of doing spiritual direction, I will send that person a link to various pieces on this blog, so even if we never connect in person, by reading the pieces on this blog, we are connected in a spiritual way that we won't fully understand until we get to the other side.
Thank you for being here. I am grateful to be part of this point in human history where we find ourselves, even though it's a hard one. We have a special bond with those of our own generation because our collective experience is on the same timeline. As we grow spiritually, we realize we have a bond with other generations as well - we begin to see how they experienced the same things we did, just on a different timeline with different details.
A few of the things I like:
Good coffee, Route 66, history, theology, symmetry, chocolate, quantum physics, desert sunsets, spiritual conversation, photography, social theory, paradigm shifts, vintage Gen X stuff/retro pop culture, and quirkiness.
In all the years of my Gen X existence, sometimes the only thing that has kept me alive when it seemed the lights had gone out in the world was a fuller source of light. I found it behind the glow coming from the pixels on the screen that displayed the video games of my youth, in the lyrics on the CDs that I listened to as a teenager, in the landscape I found myself throughout my nomadic existence, and in many other things that have made me who I am. It was God. It was grace. It was hope. This is my benediction:
May it be through the light of the pixels you find in this digital space,
that this hope and this same grace reaches you.
contact: genxpixels(at)gmail
(c) 2011- 2021 Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved
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