I am very very excited today! Today I bring you a stellar book from an awesome young writer with oodles of good stuff for us millenials! I was honored when Liz Funk, author of Coming of Age in a Crap Economy, reached out to me and asked if Grad Meets World could be a stop on her virtual book tour. It’s a long one today so make sure you’re stocked with your cup of coffee!
All of you are already well aware of the fact that we’re living in a crap economy. Unemployment is high, our degrees seem to have the same significance of a paper airplane, and non-paid internships have taken the place of entry level jobs.
So what the hell are we supposed to do when commencement speakers tell us to “follow our dreams” but the road to your dream has a blockade of obstacles that weren’t there 10 years ago? What do you do when your stuck in this limbo between your dorm room, your parents’ house, and that independence you crave? What do you do when you’re working like a mule at an unpaid internship or working a crappy job just to make ends meet?
Enter Coming of Age in a Crap Economy by Liz Funk.
Am I failure because I don’t have the post-grad life I imagined?
Wait, what the hell happened anyway?
What am I supposed to do now?
Q: Forgive the cliche question, but what inspired you to write this book?
Oh, it’s not a cliche question at all! For me, as a non-fiction writer, almost everything I write has a little element of solipsism to it, usually in a good way. Generally the ideas I get for articles and books originate because I or one of my friends has dealt with the topic and then I investigate and try to come to an opinion. So my first book, about overachieving young women in high school, college, and their twenties who put too much pressure on themselves to achieve and always be productive definitely drew on my experience at a pressure-cooker high school and always being surrounded by high-achieving young women who never felt good enough.
So as I was graduating from college, I really wanted to write about that funky period after college of being so hopeful and then realizing how hard it is to become an adult. But as I looked at the books already published on the topic by incredible women authors like Alexandra Robbins, Christine Hassler, and Lindsey Pollak, I realized that I didn’t have a ton new to say on the topic. And then I started looking for a job and I saw most of my freelance work dry up and almost all the kids I grew up with were moving back into their parents’ raised ranches after college and struggling to find jobs at the mall and I realized that I definitely had something to say about trying to get settled and come into your own in a crappy economy, which makes being a 20something more confusing and disorienting than ever before.
When I started to feel the first tremors of the recession affecting my career, I hired a writing coach to help me figure out how to place more magazine articles and she gave me some great advice, that if you have a question in life or if you’re curious about something and you want the expert opinion, write an article about it and experts on the subject are happy to weigh in and share their opinions with you, and you learn what you wanted to know. So I had a relatively tumultuous quarterlife experience and writing this book has definitely helped me reconcile that and get some awesome advice from psychology experts and other 20somethings.
Q: You’re unique among many people writing about Gen Y, namely because you’re one of us. What else sets you apart from the countless pieces of Gen Y publications out there?
Well, I think what makes me different is that a lot of the people who write about Gen Y tend to be on the older end of Gen Y, like people who were born in the late 70s/ early eighties, and I was born in 1988. I think that as more academic writing and research is done on our generation, people may try to separate those born in 1986 and earlier from those born in 1987 and later as two generations. I think that if you had an email address and an AIM account before you turned 12, your experience as an adolescent is so different from teens who weren’t so stimulated and connected online and perhaps they had a little more solitary time to be alone with their thoughts when they were growing up.
Anyway, I think because I’m in my early 20s, and not in my later 20s, I’m not looking back at this phenomenon and dishing out my own advice. Because I really don’t have a clue! I have guesses about what’s best to do—Do whatever it takes to have health insurance, Don’t do any job that makes you feel dirty or that you know in your bones isn’t moving your life in the right direction, and Whenever possible, consider entrepreneurship and going out on your own. But I don’t have any definitive answers for young people: I’m posing the questions and rounding up young adults who have been in tough situations imposed by this bad economy who have started to come up with their own solutions. I’m in the same boat as many of the people who I interviewed: I don’t have a stable job (and never have!), I live with my parents, and I have $3,400 of credit card debt. But I’m completely okay with all of those things. So maybe that what makes me unique as a narrator—I feel perfectly fine and stable despite being in a place in life that me, four years ago, would have considered a disaster.
Q: Can you give readers a snippet of how you came to terms with the current economic situation?
It was really just about reframing expectations. Like I said, if you told me when I was 18 that I was going to graduate from college, leave my New York City apartment, move to LA and get into a world of financial trouble, and then move back into my childhood bedroom in upstate New York, I would have flipped out. But I’m really very happy today and I think it’s because I’ve worked really hard to change my attitude, come up with new career expectations, and stop spending so much money to try to simulate happiness. I used to go to concerts a lot, buy whatever I felt like at the grocery store, buy salon-brand leave-in conditioner, and go out for brunch after church. None of these things are in my budget anymore, and there was definitely a period where I was upset about not being able to afford Burt’s Bees conditioner and brunches, but today I’m fine with it. I’m actually really into crafting, buying local, and bartering and swapping as a way to reduce my spending and help support other people in my community when money isn’t flowing. Now I don’t consider spending less “downgrading” because I’ve found that it’s much more fun to spend only with companies that I believe in and trade services and goods with others whenever possible.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you have for millenials trying to make due in this crazy economy?
If something doesn’t feel right, go with your gut. Whether you’re thinking about going to grad school to kill some time, or you’ve taken a job where you’re feeling really underpaid or undervalued, or you’ve been job hunting forever and you hate it… even if you’re technically doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing to pay the bills and take care of yourself, listen to your gut. If you feel in your bones that you’re not supposed to be where you are, do something else. Start freelancing. Start a business. Cobble together two or three assistant gigs with people who are doing what you want to be doing. If you’re smart and capable and you believe in your goals, there’s no reason to waste time working at Dunkin Donuts or teaching the SAT to have a steady paycheck when doing something less stable is more fulfilling and could ultimately be more lucrative.
Q: A lot of my readers (and myself) are aspiring freelance writers and entrepreneurs among other things. Any advice for those of us trying to create work from our passions?
Yes, definitely! First and foremost, buy a Mediabistro/AvantGuild membership. Their “How to Pitch” series where editors dish on exactly what they’re looking for in pitches from freelancers is so valuable; if you place one article, your Mediabistro membership will pay for itself (plus, you can deduct the membership on your taxes. Make sure you deduct things, like your printer ink and any laptop expenses and the square footage of your house/ apartment where you work—deductions are one of the best parts of being a freelancer)! Also, always look for new web publications to write for; the pay is less than at the big magazines, but it’s a lot easier to get published online and in newer publications.
Also, understand that breaking into the media industry—whether it’s newspapers, magazines, books, TV, whatever—is harder than ever before. If you’re getting rejected, part of it is that being a freelance writer/ media professional involves an obscene amount of rejection even in a verdant economy and part of it is that the publishing/ media industry is tighter and more competitive than ever before (one of my mentors edits a college alumni magazine and she has Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists pitching her and part of the reason why we’re seeing so many memoirs from Jersey Shore cast members and the daughters of conservative politicians is because publishers are only buying what they know they can sell and profit from). So this isn’t the best market to try to become a writer or TV anchor or whatever if you don’t have family connects or whatever.
So instead of getting bummed that Salon.com isn’t responding to your pitches, rest assured that it’s probably not you. So go the DIY route. Write a professional-quality blog and sell ad space. Write ebooks. I just learned of this fantastic new company called Byliner.com that publishes long-form (non-fiction) articles by freelance writers and readers buy each article for a few dollars, which I think is such an interesting and exciting new model. Come together with friends who are unemployed/underemployed writers, editors, graphic designers, web designers, and publicists and make your own publication.
The truth is, this a really weird time to be a media professional and there are all these new technologies and methods that people are test-driving, and sometimes it feels like downgrading to do an ebook or whatever, but it’s honestly our generation that is going to sort this out and lead the next phase of the media industry and I think that’s an honor—and a serious responsibility—for today’s twentysomethings.
Q. What do you hope people will take from Coming of Age in a Crap Economy?
R. I hope that they realize that they shouldn’t feel like screw-ups. So many young people today intellectually understand that it’s a bad economy but they still feel like their unemployment, or the fact that they live with their parents, or their debt is a result of some major mistake that they made that they can’t quite pinpoint. But the opposite is true! This is a funky time to be young and it’s absolutely not a reflection of your efforts if you’re doing everything you can and still not succeeding in a way that’s measured externally. So focus on being happy, finding meaningful work, and doing the next right thing, and everything else will fall into place as long as you’re taking care of yourself first and keeping at it second.
Q: Where can people buy Coming of Age in a Crap Economy or any of your other published works?
Coming of Age in a Crap Economy is available as an ebook through Amazon (which supports reading on a Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, Andoid, and Mac and if you’re on a PC, you can download Mobipocket ebook Reader), BN.com which supports the nook, and the iBookstore.
Thanks for having me, Amanda!
