Every time I watch a confirmation hearing or hear talk of a stimulus plan or find out about yet another inauguration to-do, I can’t help but think about how much work there actually is to do.

This, I’m told, is a very Gen Y impulse, the product of being young, sleep-deprived, and raised on Mr. Rogers, who told us we really could do whatever we liked. But I think it probably has more to do with getting older, and coming to grips with what exactly our future might hold. Sure, we’ve got the Wii, and HDTV, and Google, but those only go so far when you’re unemployed, drowning in debt and lamenting the plight of the polar bear.

It’s a topsy-turvy world out there, and while every generation has experienced some of that, the real grown-ups in my life say that feeling does seem more pervasive than ever, reaching into just about every aspect of life – from foreign policy to the domestic struggles of young vets, from student loans to the greatest economic instability since the Depression, from joblessness at home to the perils (human rights, environmental and otherwise) of globalization abroad. Or maybe we just hear about it more.

Regardless, I know this worldview might appear a tad extreme, so in the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d give you a little insight into what I saw and heard this week to put me in such a lovely frame of mind - a small snapshot of one Y perspective.

5 signs of the apocalypse, and why they made me think of you…

1. Gold might as well be fur. Last night, I told my boyfriend I’m off gold. I’m not that flash to begin with – and I’ve been off diamonds for a while for obvious reasons – but after reading National Geographic’s January cover story, “Gold: The True Cost of a Global Obsession,” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already known to eschew gold. “For all of its allure, gold’s human and environmental toll has never been so steep,” author Brook Larmer writes. At this rate, I’m going to have to take up an ascetic lifestyle. I already had to stop eating shrimp. My sister’s even done with Coca-Cola. And if anyone ever marries me, it’ll probably be without a ring (and not because I’m easygoing). It’s easy to dismiss as a whole lot of fanatacism, but with the amount and visibility of information that’s out there, we’re going to learn some things we don’t like. Ignoring them won’t make them go away. On the contrary, we should be grateful we do know, and doing our best to act on that knowledge when we can.
2. Everyone owes $50k! According to a financial aid counselor at a well-known Washington, D.C., university who my siblings chatted up last week, $50,000 to $60,000 in educational debt from undergrad is just about expected these days for her institution and schools of its caliber. There’s so much to say about that, and yet, no need to say anything at all. Because, as the College Board says, educational debt is an investment in your future, and a bachelor’s degree is all but essential these days just to be competitive (someone with a B.A. will earn $800,000 more than someone with a high school diploma over a lifetime), so young people hardly have a choice. But that doesn’t make it any less shameful.
3. Kids use Facebook for (not annoying) good. Believe it or not, and whatever you might think of the situation in the Middle East, I found the following rather encouraging: The 14-year-old daughter of close family friends recently updated her Facebook status – which people use to say everything from “Joey is ‘eating spaghetti,’” to, “Sarah is ’so, so, so excited to be engaged!’” – to read, “R. is ‘702 Palestinians murdered by Israel in Gaza (more than 230 children & 100 women) & 3100 injured. Donate your status.’” Now this is a little girl I’ve known since she was a baby, and whose young adulthood I’m so in denial about that I assiduously avoid her Facebook page, lest I find anything I don’t want to know. And Facebook is running out of ways to surprise me. But unlike the 101 groups for this or that cause, or messages from people actively proselytizing, this just had an earnest, honest, youthful sincerity to it that grabbed me. And  how nice to find that on Facebook.
   
4. The government hates animals. New York’s Governor David A. Patterson has proposed “an immediate 55 percent cut and elimination of zoo and botanical garden funds altogether in 2010,” writes Andrew C. Revkin on the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog. All right, I get it — the state’s in trouble, and the $5 million it’ll save by slashing the zoo’s funding will no doubt go a long way in stabilizing things. Doom a hedgehog, feed an investment banker, and all that. But really, how sad. It isn’t enough that we’re destroying natural habitats all over the world, now we have to target the artificial ones we’ve created to shelter the few animals who might survive us. What difference does it make if my kids never get to see a red panda or Bengal tiger? (Never mind the American pika, a cute-as-a-button rabbit relative that’s on its way to becoming the second animal to join the endangered species list because of global warming, behind the polar bear. NatGeo can be such a downer.) Sheesh. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s pithy but pointed video response to the budget cuts is perfect. I hope someone listens.
5. And I love my Mom, but what about the elderly? And in what could have been my own personal apocalypse, on New Year’s Eve, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. And last week, she had surgery to remove it. It’ll be a few months of recovery ahead, but the way she handled it – bouncing right back better and bossier than ever – reminded me of that Boomer resilience that some say (and I hope) we’ve inherited. But it also underscored how important excellent health care is: While watching doctors dote on my mom was a relief, I couldn’t help but think about all the people who don’t have that, not just all over the world, but right here at home. And while nine million uninsured children is a disgrace, our aging population will be larger than ever in the coming years – because of both the number of Boomers, and their lengthening life span – and adequate health care will be essential for them. Not meeting those needs would be a disgrace, too.

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about, guys. What does it all mean? I don’t know yet, except that there’s a long road of recovery and rebuilding ahead for us, too. Have I fallen off the maudlin cliff, or do you feel it, too?

Last week, I spent some time out in Dayton, Ohio, speaking at the Executive Directors’ Conference of the National Association of Regional Councils about some of the challenges of recruiting and retaining Gen Yers. NARC is the umbrella group for metropolitan planning organizations and councils of government across the country — i.e., the people in charge of many aspects of urban planning, from transportation to environmental quality.

As cool as it was to appear in front of such a distinguished group, I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting much. After all, local government and the industries around it aren’t exactly known for their staggering open-mindedness and willingness to change. Not to mention that this audience was our parents’ age. I’m glad to say, though, that I was pleasantly surprised, and extremely encouraged by everything these folks are doing to accommodate Yers. For instance, one gentleman shared how, in his office, every new hire’s first major project is a fundraiser for a major charity, which lets the young people try their hand at a big assignment, builds a great image for the organization, and allows lots of room for learning.

Many asked, though, how they could keep their Yers engaged — and frankly, coming to work — in the face of huge salaries from big corporations trying to poach them. The plans they work on have a huge impact on people’s lives, another attendee said, but is that enough for Yers? I’m inclined to say that, yes, along with lots of exposure to higher-ups’ passion, Yers will choose high-impact jobs like these over high-paying, but perhaps less rewarding, ones. (Leaving aside, of course, debt. The average college grad with loans has more than $19,000 to pay back, so s/he may have to choose salary in the short term.)

But I think the key is seeing the dedication of senior staffers. As psyched as these Boomers were about their work, I couldn’t imagine any Yer I know not finding it a little infectious. This seems to be borne out in the research, which Tamara Erickson — one of our recurring Gig experts and president of the Concours Institute — says shows that Yers value expertise above all else, including authority. Meaning that, a lot of the time, we’ll take the old guy with great stories and good advice over the younger one with a big title. So for those senior folks in the public sector or nonprofit world, retaining their Yers may just be a matter of sharing a few tales about the lives they’ve changed.

Then again, that may just be my own wishful thinking. Especially because, as a writer, I’m something of a sucker for all that touchy-feely stuff. I’d be curious to hear what you all think, though. How could one of these organizations keep you?

*****

On a related note, I and lots of the older people who write in about The Gig were encouraged by the great response to the activism post last week. But in light of that, I’d be totally remiss if I didn’t point you guys to this piece, “Narcissists in Neverland,” a “web exclusive” from Newsweek last week, the point of which, evidently, is to deride Yers for wanting to “pursue their passions” more than “make lots of money.” (Could be good for the NARC people…)

I’d hoped to avoid writing about this at all, mostly because — and I’m going to go out on a limb here — I found it a little ridiculous and more than a bit irresponsible. But who am I to deny you this kind of comedy? Among my favorite moments (aside from the fact that it uses an anecdote from organizational psychologist Mitchell Marks that appeared in Fortune’s Gen Y story six months ago — how exclusive is that?) was the following: Generation Me author Jean “Twenge has found that the gap between expectation and reality is immense for Generation Y. One example: in 1975, 24 percent of American high-school students believed that they would earn a graduate degree; today 50 percent of high-school students think the same thing. In reality just 9 percent of students both then and now actually go on to accomplish this goal.”

Shame on you people for hoping you’ll get an education! It’s not as if this were America or anything. Plus, young people may be more educated than ever before, but we’re actually going to need them to get more educated to do the jobs soon to be left vacant by experienced retiring Boomers. So keep dreaming, you crazy kids!

And then, there’s the blatant omission of the debt issue. Obviously young people are going home; you’d be going home too if you’d paid what we did for our degrees. And let’s be honest: That’s what our parents wanted us to do. Sure, there are the ne’er-do-wells, but there are also the going-to-do-wells. Supporting them now — even if they want to waste time doing, say, volunteer work — is an investment in the country’s future.

Just ask my own mom, who let me move home for six months after I graduated to see if I could make this whole magazine thing work. I’d venture to say she’d do it again, and barring any unforeseen degeneracy, I don’t have plans to empty her nest egg. And even our resident Boomer expert, Anne Fisher, has advised readers to follow their dreams in lieu of the big cash payoff in her column, so it isn’t just the indulgent moms of the world leading us up this garden path.

There’s so much more I could say, but I have a nice-person rep to maintain. So for the last word on this, visit the wonderful people at Gawker, who always succeed in saying precisely the things I would, if only my mom — narcissism-enabler that she is — didn’t read The Gig. What about you? Is this story unfair, or are we trying to live the impossible dream (and taking advantage of our parents in the process)?

And we’re back. After two weeks out of the office — at the Most Powerful Women Summit, on a quick birthday vacation to Playa del Carmen, and at my fifth reunion at Stanford — I’m probably more tired than when I left, but glad to be back. Reunion spurred some unexpected reflection (i.e., beyond the standard reminiscing), much of it surprisingly closely related to the conversations we’ve been having on The Gig. But I may need another day or two to process that and turn it into some vaguely coherent copy.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to make sure that you’d all read Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column last week, about us, the group he calls Generation Q (or the Quiet Americans). It’s a laudatory label, meant at least in part to underscore our commitment to service and the greater good at home and abroad, but it’s not without criticism.

“America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q,” Friedman writes. “That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.”

When I read this, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement, having signed a few less than effective online petitions in my day. But when, a few days later, I saw Friedman speak on a panel at Reunion, titled “Courting Disaster: The Fight for Oil, Water and a Healthy Planet,” that also included General John Abizaid and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, I understood better.

Whatever one thinks of his views, Friedman’s passion is inspiring. And not just because that’s what he does for a living; he’s representative of a whole group of people whose passion we ought to have inherited.

Have we? I’m not sure. In small ways, maybe. Or perhaps it’s that we have got that passion and simply haven’t figured out how to express it in big ways. Regardless, I think he’s right — there are some big things that need doing, and they aren’t going to happen with a Facebook invite. (And I’m as guilty as the next person. It’s telling, don’t you think, that in five months of doing this blog, today was the first day I tagged a post “activism”?) Thoughts?