Chapter Two Hundred Forty-Eight: Can't Even

I finished Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen last night, after a few heady days of feeling compelled to read it during almost any available moment, and now I want to recommend it to everyone I know, millennial or not (though I think it will appeal most to millennials).  

If you're a millennial yourself, there's a good chance you'll find at least parts of this book of cultural criticism cathartic and validating, and if you're in an older generation, I suspect it might offer some insights into millennials--or, if you disagree with Petersen's assessments of our lives, I suppose you might end up feeling that we're all just lazy and entitled whiners for daring to hope that life can be more than just near-constant work that barely allows us to maintain our parents' standard of living.  If you're in Gen Z, I'm not honestly sure how pertinent this book is to you, except to offer a critique of the currently prevailing trends, which you might use to try to avoid millennial problems altogether.

I will say that sometimes just reading this book for a while at a time made me feel a bit burned out and depressed, so as fascinating as it was, I wouldn't suggest trying to sit down and read it through all in one go.  Have something lighter on hand by way of a pick-me-up.  Still, it was nice to see so much of me reflected in this book--the good and the bad--and it was also nice to get insights into the experiences of people in my generation who grew up and currently live in very different circumstances from me.

Ultimately, I'd boil this book down to an explanation of why life often feels so hard for millennials and why it's okay to push against the things that make life so hard.  It's not a self-help book--the author explicitly avoids giving checklists or suggestions on quick fixes because those won't actually relieve the problems at hand--but it does offer a framework for reconsidering things like the compulsion to monetize every single moment of every single day and the internalization that if you have a job but don't have enough money (to save, to pay down student loans, to buy a house, to have kids, etc etc etc) it's entirely your fault for not working hard enough.

For anyone interested in millennials and our culture, this book offers lots of interesting insights.