The Renegade Spotlight feature on DaveUrsillo.com showcases the real-life stories of everyday men and women who are pursuing their dreams while defying  cynicism and risking being misunderstood by others around them.

Today, I’d like you to meet the wonderful Jenny Blake — a talented writer and five-year employee at Google whose popular blog, LifeAfterCollege.org, inspired her brand new book (which comes out tomorrow!), Life After College: The Complete Guide to Getting What You Want (Running Press).

Jenny’s new book provides simple and practical tips about life, work, money, happiness and personal growth. It’s a resource that I wish I’ve had since graduating college. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of Life After College, and I’m so impressed by the depth and detail of Jenny’s work that I want to give you a chance to win the book, right here on DaveUrsillo.com!

I’m giving away a copy of Jenny’s book to one commenter below — simply answer: What is either your (1) biggest question or (2) best piece of advice for life after college?

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1.) In your own words, introduce yourself!

Hi there — nice to meet you! I’m Jenny Blake, an author, blogger, yoga teacher, cupcake lover, puppy fanatic, football-loving gadget-obsessed girl from California. I’m 27-years-old, currently on leave from Google (my day job) where I’ve worked for 5+ years in Training and Career Development.

2.) What are some of the short- and long-term dreams you are pursuing?

Short-term: launch my book successfully into the world WHILE allowing myself to just relax and have fun.

• What is success? Feeling like I gave the promotional efforts my absolute best.

• Total dream? Making a best-seller list and/or The Today Show. Both would be beyond my wildest dreams — things I would have never DARED to say out loud even a year ago. But now I figure, what the heck?

If I say them out loud and I fail that’s better than selling myself short from the start. I’m also blessed to be taking a three month sabbatical from Google — I want to make sure I soak up my time off and just have fun and learn what life is like on the outside… on my own clock and my own schedule.

Long-term: Develop semi-passive income streams where I’m not always trading time for money. Be able to live from anywhere; arrange a bi-coastal living situation where I can split my time between NYC and CA (and even live abroad). Feel comfortable enough in my work and income to take a break. To cut back on the hours I work every week so that I can learn how to relax and just enjoy my life! I am also trying to start that now of course :)

3.) What effects have these pursuits had on your life?

The book and the blog have truly given me purpose. They have helped me define and greatly expand myself outside of my day job; I’ve learned how to express myself and inspire others in the process, which is incredibly rewarding.

It is an absolute gift to have built a community as supportive as the one at Life After College — I am more and more grateful every day. As hard as it can be sometimes juggling two jobs and putting my deepest fears, thoughts and ideas out there to the world — I’ve learned so much about myself and made so many incredible friendships in the process.

4.) What has pursuing your dreams taught you about yourself? About others? About life?

We all have so much more in common than we realize. When I feel sad and alone, and I post a blog post about challenges I am facing, I am amazed at how many people come out of the woodwork to say they can relate. It reminds me that we are all human, that we all have ups and downs, and that our lowest moments are incredibly rich growth opportunities (as difficult and as painful as they feel at the time).

5.) Do you have any special methods or practices that help you along the way? What are your sources of inspiration?

My sources of inspiration usually come from my biggest challenges — from wrestling with something on my own then figuring out how to express those feelings in service of helping others.

As for when inspiration hits: usually when I’m exercising — running, swimming, riding my bike, doing yoga — that’s when my mind gets clear and I can chew on life’s biggest questions. During a swim session I once asked the lifeguard for a pen and paper (dripping wet) so I could outline a blog post that struck me in the moment. I had 25 minutes left — didn’t want to lose it!

6.) Do cynics, doubters and pessimists affect you and your pursuits? If so, how? If not, do you avoid them, tune them out, use them to your advantage, etc.?

I’m SUPER sensitive and this was one of the things I was most afraid of when I started blogging. I wasn’t sure I would be strong enough to handle nasty Internet trolls or haters.

I feel INCREDIBLY fortunate to have built a community that is full of positive, smart, respectful people… no major pessimists or doubters so far (at least in the comments… knock on wood!).

I fight them off with kindness and by remembering the advice from the book The Four Agreements. Whatever people say to you–good or bad–is always part of THEIR story, their vision of their own lives. As one of my co-workers once said, “Don’t let criticism go to your heart, and don’t let compliments go to your head.”

– Jenny

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Alright, wanna win Jenny’s book? Simply leave a comment answering: What is either your (1) biggest question or (2) best piece of advice for life after college? You can also buy Life After College at Amazon for a ridiculously affordable sub-$10 price.

The extent to which the modern economic recession has disproportionately impacted the rising American generation–”Generation Y” or the “Millennial” generation–by way of disproportionately high unemployment and underemployment threatens to widely distend the ordinary window of time through which members of any rising generation can socially and professionally develop into formative positions of influence and leadership.

During such desperate times of foreign and domestic struggle, the dangerous and plausible consequence is that next generation of American leaders in the Millennial demographic–upon whose shoulders the conceivable survival or demise of the country ultimately rests–will be all the more disadvantaged in their rise to ever-important ranks of leadership in the United States, and to the plausible detriment of the entire free world.

What may result is a “Generation Y leadership gap,” or a distended period of time during which there is a noticeable deficit of influential leaders from Generation Y that would have ordinary and more immediately followed those of the Baby Boomer generation and Generation X, in subsequent order.

To avoid what could become a destructive deficit of leadership during some of the most significant and determinative decades in America’s history, young members of Generation Y will today be all the more compelled to press themselves to rise to positions of respectable influence among their generation and quickly achieve the respect of the aging American generations. As a nation, we will be obligated to forge relationships of respect and teamwork, for neither Generation Y nor the Baby Boomers will be able to minimize the impact and consequences of modern economic and foreign struggles alone.

The Forthcoming Gen-Y Leadership Gap

The effects of the modern economic recession on an entire generation of rising Americans could last upwards of an entire decade. The plausible consequence is that Generation Y–the next group of American leaders–will be starting that much further behind in their rise to positions of influence in America, which are going to be so important to the direction of the country during difficult times of trial, struggle and desperation.

Because the depth and magnitude of the modern recession is so disproportionately impacting members of Generation Y, and on the brink of their rise into full adulthood, those who consider themselves to be leading members of the generation must work all the harder to rise from the depths of these troubling times in order to forge working relationships with the parent generation, the Baby Boomers, to begin a new and cooperative union or what New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman calls, a “Re-Generation.”

Although unemployment and underemployment have so drastically and disproportionately disadvantaged recent college graduates and members of Generation Y, Millennials have at their disposal a wide array of unique tools, including the power and potency of instantaneous communication to a wide audience through social media, to overcome the deficit of upward social and professional mobility and in order to attain a status similar to that of conventional career influence.

The question, of course, is to what extent the Great Recession will impact and distend the ordinary window of time that would allow this generation of young American adults to progress at a “normal” pace to positions of influence and leadership in the workplace and realms of public service. Undoubtedly, the next generation of American leaders will have a significant impact on the direction of the United States and the entirety of the free world. It depends on Generation Y to rise to the occasion–in spite of the turmoil and tumult that will disproportionately disadvantaged them for years to come.

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I was born unto walls falling. I was born as borders and limitations receded, a world that was shrinking and becoming entwined.

I was born into a truly changing world.

I took my first steps in days when my parents debated The End of History, an age of triumph and freedom that all but proved the experiment set forth by founding fathers unquestionably true.  I grew as tyrants were stomped by a global force bearing colors of freedom, in a day when economies boomed toward endless boundaries. In these days, the Dollar was second to none, and, just as boundaries and borders shrank, so too were limitations of profit and monetary gain all but erased.

From youth I grew in a gilded age.

Within this globalized age of worldwide business and a World Wide Web, I learned of instant communication as not a privilege and convenience but natural state of being, a birthright of a technologically-superior society.  All I’ve known is this age of advancement and breakthrough, growth and prosperity.  Were it not for history, I might assume that this is how life has always been.

I grew older knowing no better.

And as Spartans of old were aged by force, for decades I aged under regimented education. To both Spartans and Millennials, during these years a powerful momentum grew within. For them, it grew toward the promise of certain war and dreams of glory in honorable death. For us, the momentum grew toward the promise of a world that needed our help — a world wherein our dreams would lift our wings to whatever ends we so desired.

To dream was to take flight.

From the structured education of our childhood, we Millennials raced on to commencement as if toward a cliff’s end, where upon breaching its steep edge would we jump and take flight, embarking upon the greatness we’d been promised.  We were told our dreams were not figments of fancy, but undeniable reality not yet manifested in life.  And so in cap and gown we jumped together to a world that awaited.

I was born to fly, and dared to soar.

Though quickly after jumping, we entered a world quite different.  This world is one still controlled by a generation quite different: The Baby Boomers are a generation born from war. They came of age by way of assassinations, divisive movements, controversial war, and global crises — days when the very fabric of society forever changed.  They grew up without innocence, disenfranchised and disillusioned.

The context in which we grew — like any other generation — has defined the Millennial generation and become an inseparable component of our being.  The world we inherited has defined our collective nature. The regimented education that we grew within for two decades oriented us toward lofty goals and aspirations, ones that we never thought could fail. And truly, why would we?

“The Quarterlife Crisis”

Every generation is born of circumstance.  While upon this reading our differences may seem so apparent, the generational gap between Millennials and Baby Boomers has spawned what some have called “The Quarterlife Crisis:”

“…Unrelenting indecision, isolation, confusion and anxiety about working, relationships and direction is reported by people in their mid-twenties to early thirties who are usually urban, middle class and well-educated; those who should be able to capitalize on their youth, unparalleled freedom and free-for-all individuation. They can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want.”

A catchy play-on of the “Midlife Crisis,” the Quarterlife Crisis is phrased to represent a young Millennial adult who, having recently entered “the real world” after college, confused and distressed about their life’s direction. But what the Quarterlife Crisis truly represents is a strong cultural gap between the Baby Boomer generation and their children, the Millennial generation.

In our young adulthood, the Millennial generation is desperate for a higher level of self-determination: the ability to freely following one’s grandest dreams – those dreams that, during two decades-worth of education, we aspired to fulfill – regardless of the possible financial impact (because to a Millennial, money has always been less a priority, for it has always seemed so abundant). Exacerbating the Quarterlife Crisis is the fact that the world of growth and prosperity that we grew into has recently come into severe balance.

For Baby Boomers, most struggles in life were on behalf of the socio-economic advancement of their families and their children.  Having been so successful (in light of this economic crisis, perhaps too successful?), their children are now equally willing to struggle and sacrifice, but less on behalf of socio-economic ends, and more on behalf of fulfilling the goals and aspirations that adults were perpetually encouraging for years.

A Generation Gap That Keeps Growing

Were it only so simple to deny one’s Millennial nature and refuse that instinct to soar toward endless horizons.  If it were a choice to deny this drive, a Millennial would choose easily to strive only for monetary sums and amounts of things, which are measurable and countable.  For when dreams alone reside within one’s heart, they become a burden to bear.  Such goals cannot be added up or compounded and society so often beckons physical proof of accomplishment.

Herein is not a series of complaints, but observations of a world that this generation has inherited. Further, to understand the generational gap might help pacify the Millennial generation’s collective confusion or “Quarterlife Crisis.” The problem lies not within our generation’s will to succeed, or our willingness to strive, struggle and sacrifice. The difference is a major generational gap, a difference in culture between us and that of our parents.

The means that we will use to fulfill our goals is the same, but the goals are drastically different, because we were born and raised amid such drastically different circumstances.  Insofar as we are a product of our age, our predecessors mustn’t expect the Millennial generation to emulate their own behavior or values, but only hope that the end product of our dreams holds as much merit as we claim.

We’ve been born unto different worlds. And so, while human at the core, our Millennial culture demands that we yearn for something more. We strive for deeper meaning. We long to enrich ourselves and the lives of others.  We demand to defy logic and boundary and the limitations of so-called reality. We are, if nothing more, a generation of flight.

Why would a child of this age strive for anything less?

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