By: Shilpi Mohanty
Hustle culture is this norm in most of our lives. It’s this lifestyle where a good day is working yourself to exhaustion while working towards your goals. It’s packaged in an aesthetically pleasing way as being a “girl boss”. It’s overly normalized to only maintain a career and be goal oriented with disregarding a social life and actually enjoying life.Â
For us in college, it’s like a badge of honor to push yourself to your limit till you get overly exhausted. Why cry and stay in bed when you can get material results from pushing through your emotions through grinding? With the prospect of definitive results, it gained so much popularity as it seems overly promising to heal from issues.Â
Like most of us, I was drawn to this lifestyle. After my breakup last summer, I amped up the amount of work I did all the time. I lived this lifestyle where I would go to the gym and study repeatedly. Studying was intensive for eight hours a day. I wouldn’t let myself feel anything, I would just focus on improving my grades and keep studying. Anytime I would feel a tiny bit sad, I would just think about how I’m doing a disservice to myself by not being just like the girl bosses I have seen.Â
In the end, this cycle numbed me for a while. I thought I was okay and moved on to a whole new chapter in my life. However, the day before my exam when I gave myself time to rest it went downhill. I fully burst with every emotion coursing through me. Sadness. Hurt from betrayal. Missing the good times. Everything. I never felt that level of pain before. I stayed up feeling everything. When I went to bed that night, I kept rolling in my bed.
It affected my score on that exam. I tried to then allow myself to feel my emotions every night, but I could never give myself days to just sit with it. I did for a few weeks, but it felt less appealing than hustle culture. Each time I would feel a sense of cognitive dissonance. It’s like I wanted to feel every part of my breakup, but I can’t afford to miss my valuable time. This feeling made me revert back to just doing my work and hustling without taking into consideration my feelings and social life.Â
Every couple days I’d relive some memory and it would just feel like a truck hitting me. Until this semester, I would just feel the jolts of pain at random points for a few minutes and then just do work. It took until spring break and looking at people on vacation to understand the reality of what I was doing. Â
I realized how I basically forced myself to stay alone just to achieve my goals. I avoided the possibility of being betrayed by friendships and potential new relationships to maintain the peace of being alone. I thought I was trying to be my ideal self by just emulating the ideals of being a girl boss, but I missed out on living. I gave up the possibility of new connections and strengthening the bonds to just focus on doing my assignments and just trying to not be behind. It felt like I was just reliving the same day that I hit the point of just staying in bed and fighting myself just to leave my bed.Â
So now I decided to change up things. I’m trying to incorporate things that make me happy. I fit in time to see my friends and go to the gym. It’s not worth working till exhaustion without any feeling of joy.
Being a girl boss is nice and all, but it is not worth losing out on memories. You never know what good things can happen when you take a break from working on your goals. You could find a family and memories that would be there with you for the rest of your life. Being a girl boss is great but it’s amazing with balance.