At the risk that it might degenerate into too much meta-level academic theorizing, I'd actually be interested in an analysis of generation-analysis itself. The way generations are segmented seems pretty strange, and shifts depending on who's writing, what/why they're writing, and when they're writing it. It'd be fascinating to get some sort of overview of how that process works.
As someone born in 1981, I've ended up in all sorts of buckets. Sometimes '81 is considered the tail end of Generation X. When I was younger, I thought of myself as solidly Gen-X, because "my" culture all seemed to be quintessentially Gen-X culture: Nirvana, MTV, skate-punk, the microcomputer revolution, cynicism about both staid corporate life and the hippie alternative to it, etc. Later I realized that many people considered '81 a bit late for Gen-X, but I had considered myself in it because as a teenager I identified with culture-drivers who were actually 5-15 years older (e.g. Kurt Cobain somehow seemed in my generation at the time, but was in fact born in '67). This article, and some others, by contrast would group me as a Millennial, but many of the other descriptions I've found of Millennials seem aimed at people younger than me, mainly people born in the late-80s/early-90s.
I was born in 83, and I agree. I was homeschooled, so growing up I was never part of a group of children my own age. I was smart at the time, and so I tended to spend most of my social time hanging out with folks who were 5-10 years older and absorbed a lot of culture from them. I've always identified more with the "ideals" of Generation X than with those of the Millenial generation or Generation Y. I'm cynical almost to a fault. I have extreme problems accepting un-earned authority, such that my wife said "you just aren't meant to have a boss" the other day. I really just want to be left alone to live my life in peace, like a less violent Daniel Plainview.
To get meta, I think that it's probably easiest to envision generations as phases of an ideological sine wave. At any given time, one set of ideas and culture - one phase - will be dominant and will contain most of the population. However, no phase ever dies out completely - there's always a few oddballs who will find medieval chivalry, for instance, appealing. I think that you and I were just born in between the peaks of Generation X and the Millenial generation, so our values are somewhat harder to predict.
Generational theory is interesting on the surface, but often I take these meta-analyses with a grain of salt. They seem to be grandiose astrological interpretations that would be applicable to any generation.
I'm part of the "Nomad" generation type. Nomadic definitely describes my life fairly well for the past 10 years. I've lived in 2 countries and 5 states. The post office should just start OCRing my mail and sending it via email.
As someone born in 1981, I've ended up in all sorts of buckets. Sometimes '81 is considered the tail end of Generation X. When I was younger, I thought of myself as solidly Gen-X, because "my" culture all seemed to be quintessentially Gen-X culture: Nirvana, MTV, skate-punk, the microcomputer revolution, cynicism about both staid corporate life and the hippie alternative to it, etc. Later I realized that many people considered '81 a bit late for Gen-X, but I had considered myself in it because as a teenager I identified with culture-drivers who were actually 5-15 years older (e.g. Kurt Cobain somehow seemed in my generation at the time, but was in fact born in '67). This article, and some others, by contrast would group me as a Millennial, but many of the other descriptions I've found of Millennials seem aimed at people younger than me, mainly people born in the late-80s/early-90s.