Member-only story
there’s no glory in overworking
it’s just imminent burnout.
1. lost in ‘the hustle’
The 90 hour work weeks must have made me delusional, because working at my former company never felt... real. It was a dream I couldn’t believe, or a nightmare I couldn’t leave. Sometimes both.
Do something you love, never work a day in your life—that’s how the saying goes, right? And I loved my work. Truly, I did. But never working a day? The highs were high, the lows were low, it was nothing but work. I didn’t know something could be so tumultuous.
It was good. It was bad. It was toxic. It was exhilarating. And because I held on, it was also never ending. Friends and family told me repeatedly: cut your losses, let go. They didn’t understand; how could they? When you’ve invested so much of yourself into something, it’s easy — natural even — to develop a sort of tenacity and will yourself to stick it out. After all, you’ve come so far.
Was it healthy? Probably not. But goodness, isn’t it nice to believe?
Sleep is for the weak. Failure is a choice. There is only success, and those too lazy to achieve it.
I lived for the stress. If you weren’t stressed, you weren’t challenged. And if you weren’t challenged, you weren’t going places. That’s the kind of mantra I fed myself.
The first time I had work on a Saturday, I complained about it halfheartedly to my friends. Internally, I was thrilled at being important enough to be called to work.
Wow. They need me. They depend on me.
How naive. For an ambitious, type A person like me, it was a weirdly addictive high — overworking.
I pushed myself to always be better than everyone around me. I took pride in how early I woke up, in how many different things I could successfully juggle, in how busy I was being busy. Hustle, hustle, hustle. I felt I was made for the rat race. Then again, I was also foolish enough to believe I could beat it and win— aren’t we all at some point?
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
