Opting Out of Hustle Culture
Lately I've been thinking a lot about what exactly I am doing with my "one wild and precious life," so this post is about that.
My in-laws live as if the internet stopped advancing in the year 1999. They don't use any video streaming services. They still pay for cable. They get print editions of the newspapers and magazines they like. They listen to the radio or CDs on a stereo instead of streaming music. They both technically have smartphones, but I'm pretty sure they have zero apps. They certainly don't use social media. My mother-in-law has never texted or called me from her smartphone. In fact, I don't even have her number stored in my phone, because I know that if I need to reach her, I need to call the landline. My father-in-law does occasionally text, but that's the extent of his smartphone usage. You will literally never see them passing time by staring at their phones. They just don't do it. Their use of the internet and connected devices seems to be limited to email.
These are well-educated people of comfortable means. It's not ignorance or poverty that's kept them offline. Nor is it some kind of moral or political line they've drawn and will not cross, or a matter of old age. My father-in-law had a big, important job until just a few years ago when he retired, so he surely used various forms of technology in the office. But in their personal lives, they apparently never saw the need to join the march of technological progress. Somehow the temptations of technology didn't suck them in. Basically, their use of the internet stopped at Web 1.0.
They seem happy. They are engaged in their community in real, measurable, in-person ways. Forget virtual Facebook groups about land conservation, bird watching, or transcendental philosophy. They participate in those things in real life.
I envy them. My own engagement in Web 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever we’re in now is uneasy at best. On the one hand, the participatory web we have now has allowed me to fulfill my dream of being a published novelist. Viewed from one angle, a world where anyone with an internet connection and a computer can publish a book is an exciting place. But viewed from another angle, it’s given rise to a hustle culture that’s pretty extreme, and, for me anyway, is feeling really unhealthy.
When I was in college, I was a very practical person. When I arrived, I considered myself a poet and artist, but I very quickly decided not to pursue art classes or creative writing because I needed to be able to support myself financially after graduating. I didn’t think my writing or art was good enough to be a viable career path, so I decided I would train to be a teacher. I figured that there was more demand for English teachers than art teachers, so that’s the route I chose. I could write as a hobby—I stopped making art entirely in college for reasons I still don’t quite understand—and have a secure job.
I remember one of my English professors praising my decision to get a Master of Arts in Teaching instead of a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing after undergrad. She was worried about all the MFAs and PhDs who were going into debt and would struggle to find jobs in their field. But not me. I was level-headed. I’d be ok.
And I was. I did a one-year MAT program, got a teaching position at an excellent high school school, and 22 years later, I’m still there, holding down the day job and being creative in my spare time.
In the early aughts, while working enthusiastically as a teacher, I also pursued my dream of being a writer. I submitted poems and stories to literary magazines, rejoicing in the occasional acceptance. I engaged in social media (remember Friendster?!), but this was all before smartphones, and I’ve never been one to spend the entire day at a computer, so it wasn’t a huge part of my life.
I got my first iPhone in 2011 and that’s where the problems came in: The more I engaged with the participatory “communities” of Web 2.0 on my phone, the more I started to feel like maybe I shouldn’t be satisfied to be a weekend creative with a day job. Other people were finding massive audiences online and quitting their day jobs to live the self-made dream. A lot of these bloggers and self-published writers weren’t particularly talented. They wrote ugly sentences. Their stories were hardly Great Literature. And yet they were making money and getting free of the world of bosses and set schedules. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if I could make writing the center of my life, instead of something I fit in the cracks and gaps of my days? If there are no gatekeepers to be a writer, I am my only obstacle, so, I thought, I should work harder.
And so, in a way, Web 2.0 gave me permission to dream, to shed my practical shell and let my vulnerable writer-self out. I didn’t need to wait for an acceptance to a big, famous lit mag or sign an agent. I could publicly declare myself a writer and operate on my own terms.
But sometimes (often), I kind of wish it hadn’t. Sometimes I think I’d be happier if I weren’t always striving. What if I went to work each day, did a good job at my job, came home, made dinner, watched some TV, read a little, and fell asleep? What’s wrong with being satisfied with that?
“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald
I try to imagine what my life would be like if, like my in-laws, my internet world was still Web 1.0. How would the past decade and a half have gone? What if, instead of self-publishing, I had just kept plugging away at submissions to traditional publishers and agents?
Maybe by now, I’d have landed an agent. Or maybe by now, I’d have given up. Maybe I’d still be submitting to journals, something I haven’t done in ages because I don’t have the time to be an independent content creator and pursue traditional avenues of publication. Without online promotion of my work, my relationship with writing would be significantly different. I’d be toiling away alone, in obscurity, thrilled to publish things in journals now and then, even if no one in my real life ever read them. If I wanted to share my work, I’d have to go to actual, in-person events. I’m trying to decide if this all sounds lonely and sad or if it sounds private and peaceful.
But it doesn’t really matter. In the way of hypotheticals, it’s interesting but ultimately not very useful. If there’s anything I can take away from the thought experiment, it’s that life was definitely slower in the days of Web 1.0. Now everything is instant gratification, and maybe that’s the real problem.
Because I bought into Web 2.0’s participatory, user-created-content nature, I’ve let myself get caught up in pursuit of instant gratification. I write something, I share it, and I expect people to react right now. And if they don’t, then, the message Web 2.0 sends is that I’m not hustling enough. I’ve got to create more content, post more on social media, make sure people don’t forget about me so that when my next book is ready, keep my audience primed and ready. I’ve got to keep grinding because the mark of a successful creative life in Web 2.0 is that your art supports you financially. I need to hustle, hustle, hustle so that one day when I write my Big Popular Book, I’ll no longer have to hustle. Oh, the time I’ll have on my hands, one fine morning…
As my art practice has grown in the past few years, I have found the same troubling hustle-culture attitude that I’ve developed about writing creeping into my thoughts about painting. Too often these days, my daily painting feels like it’s driven by the hustle too, the rush to make sure I have something I can post on Instagram, the desperate striving to develop my skills and be good enough to turn my art into my career so that I can be a full-time creative person who doesn’t have to hustle anymore.
Except I know is that the hustle actually never ends if you expect your art to support you. If anything, it only increases. And I guess what I’m saying is that I’m tired of the hustle.
What I definitely do not want to do with my one wild and precious life is hustle.
I’d like to get back to scribbling poems in notebooks for the love of it. I want to enjoy my sketchbooks as a place of pure exploration. I want to be okay with being a practical person again, instead of seeing my day job as a sign that I’m not good enough (or hustling enough) to “make it” as a writer or artist. And to get back to joy and practicality, I have to spend less time online where I find the comparison trap almost irresistible.
And yes, I realize the irony of all of this, that I’m sharing my thoughts on what is, effectively, a social media platform that I joined because of its promise to help writers develop sustaining careers.
I have to admit, as Substack has moved from a newsletter platform to a completely self-contained social media world, I’m feeling less enchanted by it. It’s too easy these days to feel defeated when I hear others brag about their stats and growth and income. I start to think I’m just wasting my time here. What am I even doing here, trying to compete in this crowded market of established writers?
Well, what I’m not doing here is trying to make a living. I haven’t even turned on the option for paid subscriptions, nor do I have any plans to do so.
What I am doing here is following my creative impulse to write about my life, writing, and art in the hopes of encouraging others to explore their creativity as well.
I am here in service to my Artist Manifesto:
I engage in the physical, hands-on task of creating art in order to retain my humanity in this ever-digital world. I create for the experience of creating not for the outcome. I share my work to show people that a fulfilling, creative life is possible for anyone who wants it. I encourage others to express themselves in creative ways and to explore their passions. I have space in my life to pursue many interests: Writing, painting, music, baking. There is always room for modes of expression that bring me joy.
That’s it. That’s why I share my work online. My manifesto helps me when I start feeling stuck in the comparison trap. Whenever I find myself asking, “Why am I doing this?” I can turn to my manifesto, and if whatever I am doing is in line with it, I know I should keep going.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you stay focused on what matters to you amidst the onslaught of messages we get through social media about what we all “should” be doing. What’s your relationship to social networks? How are they useful and where do you find the limits of their usefulness?
In order to spend less time online and more time on what really matters to me, I’m taking a hiatus from social media and from posting on Substack through the end of this year. If you want to make sure you get future installments of this newsletter, please subscribe below and it’ll be delivered to your email inbox when I resume posts in January! See you in 2024!