From the Outskirts: What You See When Nobody's Looking

The Triple Outsider Advantage

Let me tell you what it's like to be a Gen X woman living on a farm outside Tønsberg, Norway, watching the world lose its fucking mind. Outsider from culture. Outsider from generation. Outsider from visibility: I'm Norwegian (literally on the edge of Europe). I'm Gen X (sandwiched between generations that actually get attention) and I'm a 57-year-old woman (which means I've aged out of relevance entirely).

But here's what nobody tells you about being invisible from three different angles: you can see everything.

The View From the Edge of the Map

Norway taught me that the best view is always from the edges.

We're not at the center of anything. Never have been. We're too far north, too cold, too expensive, too small to matter in the grand scheme of global chaos. And that's exactly why we can see the chaos so clearly. When you're not drowning in it, you can actually map the currents. While the world lurches from one crisis to the next—barely catching its breath before the next catastrophe drops—I'm watching from my farm with a cup of coffee thinking, "Huh. We literally saw this coming." It's not that Norwegians are smarter—it's that we have distance. And distance is clarity.

The Forgotten Generation

Being Gen X is like being Norwegian but for age demographics.

Nobody's making documentaries about us. Nobody's writing think pieces about "What Gen X Wants." We're just... here. Keeping the shitshow running while Boomers and Millennials battle it out for attention, and Gen Z films the whole thing for TikTok.

And from this position—the forgotten middle—we see patterns others miss.

We graduated into recessions. We bought houses at the peak. We raised kids through financial crashes. We've been quietly adapting to broken systems while everyone else was still debating whether they were broken. We've lived through enough cycles to recognize the patterns. So we're watching. Taking notes. Connecting dots.

The Invisibility Superpower

After 50, the world stopped looking at me. Not gradually—it was almost overnight. One day I was relevant. The next, I was scenery. And here's the thing nobody tells you: it's fucking liberating. When nobody's watching, you can stop performing. You can stop shrinking to make room. You can stop apologizing for having standards, boundaries, or the audacity to speak up. Invisibility turned out to be freedom. Nobody's watching means nobody gets to control you.

What You See From the Outskirts

So what do you see from the edges of geography, generation, and gender?

You see the performance. People exhausting themselves trying to be seen, to matter, to prove they're relevant. The desperate dance for attention, likes, validation—fighting to be at the center and destroying themselves in the process. You see who's real and who's performing. From the sidelines, it's obvious. The people actually doing the work versus the people talking about doing the work. You see the patterns others miss. Because you're not caught up in the day-to-day drama. You're not reacting to every headline, every outrage, every manufactured crisis. You can see the actual through-lines. The systems at work.

You see that the chaos is manufactured.

Here's one example: Follow the power.

Notice who's running most of the world right now? Gray-haired men in their 70s and 80s. Holding onto power like their lives depend on it. Making increasingly unhinged decisions. Throwing tantrums when they don't get their way. Destabilizing democracies, economies, entire geopolitical systems—because god forbid they step aside.

Meanwhile, women the exact same age? We've been aged out of relevance entirely. We're "too old" to be seen, heard, taken seriously. We're supposed to disappear quietly into retirement, grandmotherhood, gardening.

The pattern? While women are told we're obsolete at 50, men are clinging to power at 70+ and burning everything down on their way out. From Norway, watching from the edges, it's blindingly obvious. These aren't wise elders steering the ship. These are men who've never been told "no" finally losing control of the narrative—and taking everyone down with them. The chaos isn't random. It's what happens when one demographic refuses to let go while another is forced into invisibility. We've been trained to step aside gracefully. They've been trained to never step aside at all.

That's not leadership. That's a tantrum with nuclear codes.

The Bottom Line

Being on the outskirts—of geography, generation, and gender—isn't a punishment.

It's a position of power.

The best strategists are never at the center of the battle. The best observers are never in the spotlight. The best pattern-recognizers are never caught up in the chaos they're studying.

So while everyone else is fighting to be seen, to matter, to be at the center?

I'll be over here. On the edges. Watching. Learning. Connecting the dots others don't have time to notice. With coffee. And clarity.

And a very short list of things worth giving a fuck about.

(Image is created with AI)