A new era was born.

Carrie and I continued breathlessly up the trail, with no idea where the hell we were going.  All we knew was that the incline kept getting steeper and there was no end as far as the eye could see.

"When does the trail turn?" Carrie gasped, stopping to catch her breath.  I stopped beside her and bent forward, clutching my aching side.
"Hell if I know, are sure you don't want to turn back?"
She looked back the way we came, pondering for a second as she took in the vast Los Angeles landscape spread out below us.
"No, I think going back will be much harder. Let's just keep going and see what happens."

Unknowingly, Carrie had just summed up what we had been discussing for the last hour and half, what were we doing with our lives? Apparently, we were winging it.

Recently turned 23, Carrie was a college graduate in media production and was currently freelancing (yet again) on another low budget, independent film, in a position she recently discovered she no longer felt fulfilled in.  Coincidentally, Carrie wasn't the first to doubt her career choice post-college in the wake of the recession and waning hopes of a fulfilling career. I had only just met Carrie in the last few months, at an event hosted by the Los Angeles 20s, a group dedicated to the meeting and bonding of the namesake.  We became instant friends while musing over our mutual love of filmmaking and travel, and have since progressed to hiking and local adventure buddies, as well as life conversationalists.

Carrie has since become a close friend and simultaneously, another Generation Y statistic.  She has become part of a thought I've had brewing in my mind as conversation after conversation with twenty-somethings triggered a subconscious reaction: all are saying variations of the same thing: "Help! I'm lost!"

This epiphany has got me wondering, if so many of my friends have expressed in one form or another the same fears, is this not a link to a bigger picture depicted as Generation Y? Are we not essentially all going through the same worries and concerns cross-globally? That's when it hit me. Regardless of our backgrounds and upbringing, something holds us all together as a unified front: our birth dates.

Another defining characteristic of Generation Y is our easy understanding of and reliability on technology, especially social media.  In one click, we can instantly be connected to friends and family, regardless of where we're located. That being said, we not only have the ability to expand our relationship circles locally, but also cross-globally.  I couldn't help but notice that although my circle of twenty-something friends was constantly expanding around the world, and even though each individual is on a different life paths, there are still universal characteristics that hold us Mellenial's (another Gen-Y nickname) together, we don't know what the hell we want let alone how to get it.

Most, if not all of the conversations I've held with Gen-Y's in recent months have at one point or another lightened on the questions of what are you currently doing with your life and are you happy doing it.  I've noticed that when the topic comes up, there is often a moment's hesitation before the repetitive excuses begin.  Ironically enough, the excuses that come aren't meant to convince the external audience, but morose the inner voice of anxiety that keeps asking "What am I doing?"

We Mellenials (also defined as Echo Boomers born between 1980 and the early 2000s), are a more educated, technology driven, success focused generation oriented on fulfilling life's desires...without knowing what those desires are.  The only problem is, although we have come to understand we have the freedom and choice to become anything we want to be, we seem to be paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of all of the choices.  In an ice cream shop full of 31 choices, how do you pick the right combination for taste bud happiness? Even more complex in a world filled with endless possibilities, where do you even begin to know what or which dream to pursue?

From the Pacific to the Atlantic to all in-between, I've decided that despite our differences in economical, cultural, and geographical upbringings, Gen-Y is a collective group of young adults all lost in the same question: who am I and what do I want out of my life?

With the help of my internationally displaced friends as well as the new acquaintances I meet along the way, I hope to discover exactly who is Generation Y, what drives us, and how we as a technology driven era, can unite to answer those universal questions that linger at the forefront of all of our minds.

Introducing Generation WHY. We're here, we're now, we're confused