This Boomers Life.
Welcome fellow baby boomers! Welcome also our admirers and fellow travellers to This Boomers Life, your new global blog about this wonderful and crazy life, queerdom, aging (dis)gracefully, politics and trying to stay on the left side of the culture wars. These are the themes that will thread this blog together.
We Boomers have stories to tell, experiences to share, human rights victories to trumpet. And we all have more battles to be won. I hope this blog can serve as a pitstop on the remarkable journey of Boomers to remake the World into a more inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and safer place - a point of reference for inspiration, motivation, humour, and for the love of god - lots of f**king bad behaviour. A place not without risks. Absolutely not! But certainly not a place where violence, predatory behaviour, intolerance, or bad manners will find a home. That said, back in the day many of us cut our ‘political teeth’ in the rough and tumble of community politics that at times resembled a blood sport!
Where it was not unknown for some to eat their own.
Coalition politics circa 1970’s
I have lived and worked in some of the toughest and most wonderous places in the World, since leaving Australia in 2002 to work for the United Nations. I retired in 2019 after having started my adult life in the 80’s as a youth advocate, a gay and lesbian coalition activist, and a community organiser. I am passionate about life and human rights for all – and in all places around the globe – and for all cultures and sub cultures older and new – and for Indigenous and blended – and for those settled and for those on the move.
I have stories to tell, many of which are true and almost all of which are embellished.
Bear Pool Party, Bangkok, 2019
Like many of you, I wonder if I am becoming too comfortable, too complacent and far too respectable with age. I am also becoming somewhat obsessive about the ever-evolving cultural wars and how to stay on the left side of the debates without sounding like an ‘oldie’ or worse still, a right wing git. “Okay Boomer, please be quiet, you have well and truly sucked your lemon peel dry.” Sigh! At times I feel how a kangaroo might feel, frozen in time by the glare of the lights of an oncoming truck. But bugger that Boomers, let’s hop on along and have some fun!
Let the journey continue.
I acknowledge that I occupy land of the Gadigal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present and those emerging. Always was always will be Aboriginal land.
Cheers, Bruce
PS … the term baby boomer/boomer is just another label of many. We can wear it with pride, or we can wear it as a hat, or we can stick it up our arse, or we can choose not to wear it at all. But, we can certainly have fun with it, without seeing ourselves in opposition to other age groups - particularly those further down the food chain.
PSS … All contributions welcome. Drop me a line, pen a post, share a snap or a joke. Keep it simple and in keeping with the themes of This Boomers Life, otherwise the politburo may need to be consulted, and they rarely respond.
