I quit hustle culture and now I do MORE

^{*unhinged voiceover that ends early coz I needed to pee - it’s a real treat.}

Just before I share my essays I give them to my partner, James, because he’s a genius and I value his opinion. He will tell me what iv’e done well, give a bit of feedback and then, inevitably, every time, he will tell me I have forgotten to write an introduction. I have written one? I will reply. No you haven’t. You just go straight into the topic. He insists. Whatever. THIS is my introduction. WELCOME. Today, we are going to talk about how stepping outside of hustle culture made me more ambitious and more productive than ever. We are going to look at why this happened, and what true human productivity looks like outside of the rules of capitalism. INTRO OUT.

Things that I thought would happen if I finally let go of HUSTLE CULTURE:

• I would never get anything done

• I would hate myself

Things that actually happened when I finally let go of HUSTLE CULTURE:

• I am more ambitious and creatively alive than ever

• I love myself so much, holy shit, I am so cute, so sweet.

First things first, let me lay out what I mean by hustle culture.

I mean capitalism, of the late stage variety, neoliberalism, capitalist realism, you know, gestures vaguely around - ‘THIS’.

I am talking about a system that caused me to think I was a piece of shit for not wanting to labour my life away. I’m speaking of the system that insists I base my self worth on how much money I make. The regime that wants you to believe that there is no alternative to a world of raging, worsening inequality. That’s what I mean by the softened and inadequate term: hustle culture.

Secondly, let me just say, I have not, nor do I know that it is possible, to properly rid yourself of the influence of gestures vaguely around again ‘THIS’. It is continuous work, because we are continually faced with the system each day.

But for a long time, I thought I was lazy when I rested, thought I was disgusting when I couldn’t hold down a job, and judged myself only through the lens of how much I could produce.

I no longer do this. I am no longer convinced or seduced by the stories that attach a human’s worth to how much output they have, and how much they contribute to the GDP. It took eight years of journaling about it basically everyday, but I feel, in so many ways, liberated.

A lot of the anti-hustle rhetoric centres around rest and going slow. These are crucial conversations. We must honour our own pace, we must dawdle, we must dilly dally, sleep, and luxuriate. These are our rights and they have been stolen from us. We must relearn that they are innate parts of being human, not something to be ashamed of, not signs of laziness, or a treat for when you reach capitalist nirvana: burnout.

On my journey of unlearning the hustle, I have learnt what it means for me to rest. But something else happened to me as I unlearnt these stories, something very active: I became very, very alive.

I became very, very productive. Productive in the true sense of the word: I made things that mattered.

But I wasn’t productive because I was trying to prove my worth. I was writing books, and painting, and reading books and thinking and sharing my creations because these are the things that make me feel like me, these are the things that make my brain twinkle.

Instead of trying to work my arse off to prove I am a worthy and responsible adult, now I create my arse off because that is exactly what I want to do. I opted out of the grindset and produced more than ever because I realised… I really fucking want to create.

So how did a decade of me incessantly telling myself to slow the fuck down and not hustle, turn into more doing? I have theories. Specifically, I think this has something to do with Desire.

The system has placated us, oversaturated us with a million things to want that will make us more comfortable, complacent, and apathetic.

There is so much to ‘want’ in our culture that the noise has drowned out our true desires. Buried them under ads for Korean skin care and new TVs. When I was able to truly ask myself, what do I want from my life? Not, what should I want from life? I was able to access a well of energy and resources I had never seen before.

When I realised I wanted to create because I am a born storyteller, creator, maker, I found a huge well of energy. ‘I must produce because that is what makes me a good person’ has morphed into, ‘I want to create because I am a creator’. And living life from this place had made me accidentally, incidentally, prolific. When you reconnect to who you are and what you want outside of ‘THIS’: hustle culture, neoliberalism etc, you access a crazy power. A pure energy source that is so abundant you have to put it somewhere.

There is a popular idea doing the rounds that says that Ambition is a trauma response and a sign you need healing. I wrote a substack about it a year ago because it triggers the fuck out of me. I have felt so suspicious of my ambition in the past few years, precisely because WANTING feels so fucking good, so very Amie, so delightfully alive. It doesn’t feel like something that needs to be healed. And I am beginning to understand that it doesn’t need to be. I am not ambitious to fill a hole (lol). There is no hole, just an innate human desire, a very-Amie-want to create and share and connect.

I am beginning to understand that Capitalism did not invent ambition. It captured it. It took our human power to make, shape, build, imagine, strive, and transform the world, then bent that power toward profit (for the few). That energy, that want to create and improve and experiment is human. It is mine! And you will not take it from me again! The human longing to become better and to create cool shit has been beaten into a “useful” shape by capitalism. Devotion has been hijacked and it is now only acceptable if it is made economically productive for the machine.

Fuck it baby! FUCK IT. Ambition is mine mother fuckers!! I will use it to create the things that call my name!!

Ambition, when hijacked by capitalism, becomes a force that makes you feel like you are never enough. The system manufactures scarcity, plunges a little hole in your heart, and then tells you that in order to fill the hole you must produce more, want more, rise to the top. But no matter how obedient and productive you are, the hole just gets bigger and bigger.

Ambition and the act of creation (productivity!) in its original form is the energy of the ARTIST. The creator. The human. It is a potent form of magic and can be wielded at whatever pace you want, and it can do whatever you want.

I worry that is kind of what this essay sounds like: the trick to getting ahead is: quit hustle culture and you’ll hustle harder! But this isn’t a productivity hack. This is …

Well I don’t entirely know… a strange discovery, after years of shedding stories that were keeping me very small. This isn’t about “getting ahead” at all. We are not racing to be the most productive artists. Creativity, action, and ambition exist outside of capitalism. I have discovered what it feels like to act on my true desires.

Let me leave you with an extract from my journal, one of literarily thousands of entries that focussed on re-writing my belief that my goodness was linked to how much I could work:

You are not what you do, you are so much more than how much you get done in a day, your worth is not dependent on output, your worth is not linked to how much money you make. You are a being of magical stardust. You are here to ponder, potter, create for no real reason. You are not a cog in the machine. You are Amie. You are not a tool for Neoliberal society to use to increase the GDP. You are a conscious part of the universe here to drink tea, make art, delight and connect.

Amie.