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Escaping the Capitalist Hellscape for a Slower, Simpler Life
Everything doesn’t have to be a hustle
When I was first a divorced, single mother, I embraced hustle culture. It felt relatable to me. I got very good at finding creative ways to bring in money for my family, and I could juggle multiple side gigs to make ends meet. Every new hobby was a potential way to create income. Every talent or gift was a way to create more security in my life.
There are positives to hustle culture, but the lifestyle itself is a trap. We learn to hustle, but we don’t ever learn to stop hustling —or how to savor our successes. We just keep moving, afraid that if we ever stop, we’ll drown.
But in all that hustling, I began to feel like I was drowning anyway. I wasn’t hustling anymore; I was flailing, reaching out for anything capable of pulling me to the surface. I didn’t want to work every single hour of my day. I didn’t want every creation to become a commodity for sale. I wanted ease. But there’s no room in the capitalist hellscape of hustle culture for true ease.
cap·i·tal·ism /ˈkapədlˌizəm/ noun
an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
