This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent.

So I just read a pretty sweet article called: Up with Grups - The Ascendant Breed of Grown-Ups Who Are Redefining Adulthood from New York magazine, and I loved it. Nay, I looooooove it. LUV. luvd it.

At first I was hesitant to read it, because
a) I don't consider myself a "grown-up"
and
b) It's sooOoo long (omg I have to click "next" EIGHT times?)

But, I'm glad I read the whole thing, because I really relate to it, even though I'm not a "grown-up" and have no kids of my own. (That's a hint that y'all should read it too).

Ok here are some of my fav paragraphs:

...“Mainstream American adulthood is so narrowly defined, it’s only natural that people who have time and leisure to think about it are going to rebel against it.” Yes, of course, why not? “We want to be good parents. We want to love our kid and raise our kid up properly, with decent values.” Right on! “But we don’t want our lives to become nothing but Mommy & Me classes.” Who would? Fuck Mommy & Me!

... This is where the Grup diverges from the bobo, the yuppie, even the yupster. The Grup does not want a corner office. The Grup does not yearn for a fancy title. The Grup does not want—oh, please, do not ask the Grup to manage—a staff. “I just wanted to make fun stuff that went on TV,” says Peccini. “Then all of a sudden I’m doing performance appraisals and going to management seminars.”

... For a Grup, success isn’t about how many employees you have but how much freedom you have to walk, or boogie-board, away.

... You see, it’s not that Grups don’t want to work; they just don’t want to work for you. In a recent Money magazine poll about bosses, 54 percent of the respondents said they wouldn’t want their boss’s job no matter how much money you paid them. Fifty-four percent.

... There’s that tricky word again: passion. What’s with the Grups and passion? It’s all anyone wants to talk about. Passionate parents, passionate workers, passionate listeners to the new album by Wolf Parade. Even Rogan lights up when he talks about touring Japanese textile factories to find the perfect denim for his jeans. And I start to realize: Under the skin of the iPods and the $400 ripped jeans, this is the spine of the Grup ethos: passion, and the fear of losing it.

That one sentence hits so close to home, it's fugging unbelievable.

I once interviewed Andy Ryan who wrote the article: "Who Owns REI", and I started crying. CRYING. Crying like there's no tomorrow b/c he was describing how REI has changed its ways, and I cried like a kitten.

Then he looked at me and said, I know why you're crying, it's not REI or corporations or anything like that, you're crying because you have these values and you are afraid of losing them.

Anyway, I thought the article was pretty right on about the job and career thing. I don't want to manage anybody. I don't want to have a "staff". I just want to love my job, and go surfing or climbing or boarding or have lunch with a friend I haven't seen in a while whenever I want to.

And if and when I have kids, I don't want them to grow up being somebody *I* think they should be, like a doctor, lawyer, engineer or whatever the stereotypical Asian Parents Dream is. They can be whoever they want, as long as they don't become Republicans...

I keed! I keeed!!!!!