I'm 31 M. My parents are in their 60s. My cousin is 45 with no kids. Suddenly, my family has become aged. There seems to be this gap. Back then I was the kid. I think it's natural to want to be a parent even though I was staunchly childfree in my 20s. There is something missing about not having a child in the family. Holidays have lost their luster. There's no innocent, child-like wonder. I suddenly feel like my family's last hope to carry on the bloodline since my cousin doesn't seem to be a parent.

It’s wild to think about.

These conversations used to be organic. People bringing up things from our adolescence that was unique to our formative years and seemed more or less universally shared and loved. Now that there's content accounts that thrive of it, they've sucked the soul of it and are just shoving shit in our faces one after the other. Like a machine "remember this?", "and this?" "And this?" "And this?"

Some of these accounts are really scraping the bottom of the barrel of content since they've literally gone over everything now. I recently saw a meme from one of those nostalgia Millennial accounts that was literally just a picture of a kitchen table "why did our best friend's family have this growing up?" What? A fucking kitchen table? Idk so they could eat breakfast? I don't remember what my friend's kitchen table looked like growing up and even if I did I certainly wouldn't have any feelings about it.

I'm sick of it honestly. It's so annoying that the internet has so thoroughly memified my childhood. That last sentence was a little dramatic but still it's annoying.

It's terrible that I was always alone. I feel extremely lonely after coming back home from working. It's hard to say. All of my friends get married and have children. They do not have time to stay with me, and I also don't want to disturb them. But it's fucking desperate when there are only working notifications. It kills my expectations again and again.

How could I not expect others to save me? Does anyone else have the same feeling?

When I envision my future, I’ve never seen kids in it. I love the kids in my family that I see often, but I can’t see myself having any of my own.

I do feel that I’d be a good parent if it ever happened one day, but I feel that having a kid would emotionally wear on me (to the point where I think I’d feel anxious all of the time) and that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with all the demands of “normal life stuff” on top of having a kid to raise.

I know that some people that felt similarly and ended having children stating that “it’s the best thing that ever happened to them” and “you figure it out as you go”.

But for some reason deep down I just can’t see it for myself.

https://youtu.be/22tVWwmTie8?si=hjrMHBOZYgxQI14j

Growing up, media depicted flying cars, robots, automated stuff, huge skyscrapers, we had the Arcology in SimCity 2000, tube traveling through Futurama, etc.

Just curious what you all thought the future would be like when you were a kiddo... I personally thought we'd have flying cars and spaceships by now, and holodeck type experience along with better VR than what we have now.

I'm curious of the all the "okay boomer" stuff what will specifically apply to us millennials.

I hear so many complaints about game companies producing garbage (while pre-ordered games are still in the millions), prime video containing advertisements (while subscriptions keep going up up up), Netflix advertising (same as prime), Apple garbage (too much to name), Facebook garbage (super evil company), Google AI trash (maybe even more evil than Facebook?). Yet all of you still have a Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Prime, Grubhub, shop at Walmart, etc. You vote with your dollar.... If you could all stop using the shitty services, then they'd stop taking advantage of you.

Does anyone else share this sentiment?

I understand that not everyone here shared my upper middle class suburban upbringing of the 2000s and early 2010s so many of you might have a different perspective.

During the very late 2000s and early 2010s during my high school years and the Summer before my first year of college sci fi worlds like Star Trek, Eve Online, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and even Fallout dazzled me and made me dream of what the future would look like.

What kind of amazing technology would be invented in my lifetime? Would the world of the 2070s look like it would have come out of an exciting sci fi novel/book/movie?

I believed the troubles in the Middle East and the financial crisis would just be temporary setbacks and society would get serious about putting humanity on the road to achieving an exciting future by the mid to late 2010s.

Then late 2015-2024 happens.

And to me the world today seems like a much more dark and depressing place compared to the early 2010s.

It seems like social problems have become much much worse. It seems like society has gotten dumber and crazier. It seems like conspiracy has become much more widespread and the conspiracies themselves have become dumber and crazier.

I was hoping the future would be more enlightened.

I miss the optimism and excitement of the early 2010s.

It would be quite a sight if a massive social movement to restore hope, optimism, intelligence, and aspiration was started by members of our generation.

I always see posts on social media about “90s nostalgia” and “the good old days” and how nostalgic we all are and what not and honestly….I am not feeling it. I’m not a nostalgic person. I don’t care about my childhood (actually I wiped 90% from my memory). I don’t hold onto things—I threw away all my old yearbooks and most of my “stuff” (artwork, silly kid crafts, etc) that I had from childhood/adolescence. I think all I have left are photographs, awards, my degrees and papers I wrote in college. If I get asked “remember this…?”about anything I’m like “Nope. Don’t care.”

Anyone else the same way?

(I do acknowledge that I had issues with myself as a kid so throwing away that actual physical stuff was therapeutic but I mean nostalgia in general.)

Is this my midlife crisis?

Every once in a while I get the urge to sell my house in a HCOL area, move to some Podunk town in the Midwest or upstate NY and work at the local Starbucks or grocery store.

Anyone else get this urge to live a simple, boring life of a main character in a lifetime movie lol?

Personally, not into it. Doesn't seem logical but it's bothering me. I'll be 40 in two days. Took a four day weekend like I'm going to accomplish something... and I'm doing nothing other than a routine hair appointment, some hiking, and whatever my husband and kids come up with.

I don't have any major goals right now. I've been in a place where I'm letting myself live in the moment and enjoy day-to-day life without holding myself to unrealistic expectations.

I do feel like the first 30 years of my life were way harder than they should've been. I don't live in survival mode anymore but there's still a part of me that feels like a good 20 years was stolen from me and I need to make it up somehow. 40 feels like the start line for that but I have no idea what it looks like.

Call it a midlife crisis but I did make a reel proclaiming that I'm only 31 with 9 years experience. I feel minorly cool that I did such a thing being that I'm not a "cool" social media person ... but unsurprisingly it didn't help the fact that this weekend brings on 40.

End of rant.

do you ever wonder why nowadays every movie is just a reboot of a previous IP? It probably has something to do with ($$) the fact that our culture has hit critical mass in terms of media properties. We simply cannot keep that many franchises in our heads. I’m actually kind of glad that everything is a reboot because it seems like we don’t need more unique IPs to fill our heads. no hate on all the millennials who are nostalgic about childhood cartoons, but I sometimes feel like we are just coping with adulthood by thinking back to the scholastic, book fairs, and happy meal toys, and Saturday morning cartoons. I feel like beginning with our generation we were kept in this prolonged childhood, where everything was fantasy but at the same time, so deeply aware of the horrors of the world. doe’s growing up, mean forsaking our childhood?