Welcome to the Anti-Hustle!
Welcome to The Anti-Hustle. Here, you will meet people actively reclaiming success from the "always on" mentality that our modern society romanticizes. This newsletter has a simple purpose: to inspire you to find your own contentment, despite internal and external pressure to measure your worth by your career.
From the moment I reached my 20s, I remember being inundated with the sense that I needed to find the “right job” and that I wouldn't be happy until I found it. Come graduation day, it seemed like a switch went off and everyone I knew had plans to go to graduate school or had internships or the seedlings of their career already lined up. Was there a discussion or secret meeting I had missed? I felt like everyone had been handed a map and I was left figuring it out on my own.
As the child of two self-employed parents, I saw how hard they worked and decided that if I ever tried to follow this path, I would struggle. I became convinced that a 9-5 office job was the only way to have a supportive profession.
But the road to such a career seemed riddled with difficulties. What with my lack of self-confidence and inexperience, I applied to job after job and barely received a response. I felt as though I was throwing my resume down a deep, dark well, then calling out, “Hello?” only to hear my solitary voice, bouncing off the walls, echoing back at me.
When I did get an interview, it felt like the worst kind of test with an unsaid message of, “Tell me why you’re worth a second of our company’s time.” No matter how often I rehearsed my answers, the minute the spotlight was on me, I transformed from an extroverted, bubbly person into a stammering, nervous wreck. I never really felt like I "made it."
My other problem was that I consistently have had a wide range of interests. One minute I was considering an internship in publishing and the next, I was trying out a bar tending course. The idea that I had to settle down and commit to just one direction haunted me. I was afraid to lose different parts of myself and miss out. When I think about this, I often think of one of Cheryl’s Stray’s letters from her beautiful advice column, Dear Sugar, where she talks about thinking about alternative paths we could have taken as, “the ghost ship that didn’t carry us.”
From the moment I reached my 20s, I remember being inundated with the sense that I needed to find the “right job” and that I wouldn't be happy until I found it. Come graduation day, it seemed like a switch went off and everyone I knew had plans to go to graduate school or had internships or the seedlings of their career already lined up. Was there a discussion or secret meeting I had missed? I felt like everyone had been handed a map and I was left figuring it out on my own.
As the child of two self-employed parents, I saw how hard they worked and decided that if I ever tried to follow this path, I would struggle. I became convinced that a 9-5 office job was the only way to have a supportive profession.
But the road to such a career seemed riddled with difficulties. What with my lack of self-confidence and inexperience, I applied to job after job and barely received a response. I felt as though I was throwing my resume down a deep, dark well, then calling out, “Hello?” only to hear my solitary voice, bouncing off the walls, echoing back at me.
When I did get an interview, it felt like the worst kind of test with an unsaid message of, “Tell me why you’re worth a second of our company’s time.” No matter how often I rehearsed my answers, the minute the spotlight was on me, I transformed from an extroverted, bubbly person into a stammering, nervous wreck. I never really felt like I "made it."
My other problem was that I consistently have had a wide range of interests. One minute I was considering an internship in publishing and the next, I was trying out a bar tending course. The idea that I had to settle down and commit to just one direction haunted me. I was afraid to lose different parts of myself and miss out. When I think about this, I often think of one of Cheryl’s Stray’s letters from her beautiful advice column, Dear Sugar, where she talks about thinking about alternative paths we could have taken as, “the ghost ship that didn’t carry us.”