Midlife, Mayhem & Men in Suits: A Gen X Field Report

I don't know who needs to hear this, but this cannot be the best timeline. Somewhere, someone clearly hit the wrong button—“Start New Game” became “Launch Global Shitstorm (Legendary Difficulty).” And here we are: midlife, peri-menopausal, with stiff hips and sharper instincts, watching the world get dragged through the mud by men who treat diplomacy like a dick-measuring contest and leadership like a toddler tantrum in a suit.

Every morning brings a new headline. Another war. Another summit with forced smiles and passive-aggressive handshakes. Another press conference where the speaker sounds like she’s either reading hostage notes or trying to sell us a timeshare in hell. Meanwhile, regular people like us are just trying to remember what day it is and whether the milk in the fridge is still good.

And it’s not that we’re shocked anymore—we're way past shocked. We’re just… tired. Existentially exhausted. Not the kind of tired you fix with a Sunday nap, green juice and a face mask. No, this is that deep, bone-heavy fatigue that settles in when you realize the people making global decisions might actually be less emotionally evolved than your sulky 15-year-old. (And they at least know how to admit when they’re overwhelmed.)

It’s like we’ve all been trapped in a never-ending group project where the only ones talking are the loud, entitled blowhards who never did the reading. And the rest of us? We’re expected to keep showing up, smiling at the grocery store, nodding politely at work, and pretending it’s perfectly normal that World War III is trending on social media while we’re heating up soup for dinner.

Honestly, what would be truly revolutionary right now? A little self-awareness at the top. Just one leader standing up and saying, “Look, we’ve made a mess. Let’s calm the hell down, drink some water, and figure this out like grown-ups.”

But no. What we get is more ego. More gaslighting. More empty words while the global kitchen burns.

And while the world spirals, we—the women—are quietly holding up the roof with one hand while stirring the pasta with the other, holding space for our aging parents, launching side hustles, going to therapy, regulating our nervous systems, and wondering how we’re supposed to save the world when we can’t even remember where we put our glasses.

I’m not saying women would magically fix everything. But I am saying that if the world were run by a council of emotionally intelligent Gen X women with healthy boundaries, a working bullshit detector, and access to red wine and group chats, we’d at least have a damn plan. And snacks. And probably some decent conflict resolution tools. 

We’ve raised toddlers. We’ve navigated hot flashes in boardrooms. We’ve buried loved ones, started over, stayed soft, stayed strong. We’ve survived marriages, breakups, layoffs, and algorithms that think we want to buy wrinkle cream and fake eyelashes.  We know how to deal with chaos. We know how to rebuild.

So no, we’re not surprised. But we are done pretending this is fine.

Screw that.

And screw the script.

Rant over, pass the wine.

"Still figuring it out,

sharing what works"

XO, Line