Cross-generational Rift

You know, every now and again I question where I am in my life.  I am nearly…wait…not going there  lol…let’s try it this way, at my age I should be firmly established in a career and working toward saving for my retirement.  The dynamic has changed unfortunately though, and in today’s world we are finding more and more (older) people going back to school to either get new skill which are critical to compete in today’s workforce or because of this blasted recession..nay! depression, causing them to find work in other fields as their’s has become obsolete or was outsourced.   Finding a job has become a job in itself as we can no longer go to a business, ask for an application, and interview at the same time.  Technology has made that process obsolete.  Instead we have become a stack of virtual résumés without faces, only qualifications.  No longer can we sit face to face with a person after filling out an application and schmooze them into giving us a chance.  If we don’t fit into just exactly the parameters of what they are looking for-virtual file 13 for you!  I don’t know how this world is going to recover from this mess or even if we can.  One thing I do know for sure though is that without some sort of education or skill that makes a résumé reader go “ WOW! I want this person”, we are doomed.  I guess where I am going with this is, one need not be discouraged if you are 40 something and have no direction.  There are a ton of us in that bracket who are having to do double duty to get into the tech of the 21^st century as well as try to provide for some sort of future for ourselves.  When I was in high school, we had one computer on the whole campus—remember they were thousands of dollars back then—and it was a DOS machine, TRS80.  In college—the first time—we had a lab of them:  all P1 running DOS as well with 5.25” floppies as our save medium because the hard disks were barely big enough to hold DOS.  Yeah it really was like that.  The point is that because of our lot in life and simple timing, we are caught in a cross-generational rift.  We can get into tech and become successful, but it is going to take much more hard work than the 20 something’s that were born with Microsoft in their teething rings.  Please know that  I am not complaining, I am just blogging here.  I suppose where I had wanted to go with this wasn’t where I needed to go…instead this is what developed.