Hustle Culture, Hiking, and Healing
What a whirlwind of a last three months.
We had family in town for three weeks, which really meant seven weeks. The two weeks before were an emotional gearing up, complete with catching up on work and playing through all the worst case scenarios. The two weeks after involved a myriad of conflicts between the two of us that resulted from a buildup on conversations that we didn’t have because our energy was dedicated to tending to family.
By the time we got ourselves organized, we had three weeks before our six-week sabbatical, which meant seeing our clients multiple times before we left.
We made it to Austria, the starting country for our six week sabbatical, two weeks ago. That was also a harrowing journey that involved Schiphol Airport screwing up our initial flight, “sleeping” in the Salzburg train station as a result of it, and hiking a gorgeous 14 mile first leg on less than an hour of sleep.
We’re on day 15, and today is the first day that I’ve had the capacity to write anything meaningful. (This Substack.)
Julia and I are big planners. We use the old-school planners to write down everything from client information to notes about travel and upcoming events. We have a shared Google calendar as well. We excel at weekly business meetings about our administrative, Sexvangelicals, and travel (read: fun) lives.
And sometimes, life is gonna life.
Our first two weeks in Austria have been a great example of that.
We had the expectation, rooted in long distance hiking trips in Spain (Camino de Santiago), Italy (Tuscany portion of the Via Francigena), and Scotland (West Highland Way) that we’d hike for six hours, sweat a little bit, and arrive at our destination mid-afternoon with time to write and read.
The Alpe Adria, the hike that we’re doing, is hard, y’all. In all but two days, we’ve ascended and descended at least one 5,000 foot mountain. While we typically use our hikes to discuss some of the more challenging, deeper elements of our relationship, we’ve also spent a lot of our hikes gasping for air (me while ascending; I’m convinced Julia is part mountain goat) and carefully watching our steps so we don’t slide down the mountain (Julia while descending; I tend to be a bit more of a daredevil on these).
And the conversations that we have had have been really intense.
Do we want kids (yes), and how do we build professional lives that leave room for children?
What projects do we prioritize, and what goals of ours need to be put on hold?
How do we make Sexvangelicals more sustainable?
How do we navigate the very different challenges that our family systems provide while being kind people who also don’t get walked all over?
We both, not surprisingly, got sinus infections the first two days of the trip—I’m still trying to kick mine. I had some knee and ankle issues that have only begun to resolve themselves in the last day or two. Julia got ill a few days ago, resulting in a trip to a local urgent care yesterday.
It’s no wonder that we’ve been exhausted, and that it’s been hard for us to write. The first two weeks of our trip have been almost exclusively about recovery from the last six months (at least).
But hustle culture and life is gonna life don’t mix well.
I don’t have any easy solutions to this. “Doing less” is not really an option, despite popular opinion, because psychotherapy (and American healthcare in general) are part of the larger gig economy, meaning that we get paid based on how much business we bring in, rather than making a flat salary, so hustle culture will be a part of our lives barring one of us changing careers or socialized healthcare where the government gives us salaries for our psychotherapeutic services.
Given how passionate we both are about mental health and how allergic large portions of our country are to the word “socialized,” the chances of that are slim.
Hiking, then, serves as the perfect metaphor for navigating hustle culture. We know where we are, we know (for the most part) where we’re going, we have a few rest days planned here and there (Wednesday is a planned non-hiking day, for instance), and there are a ton of different options from point A to point B.
Sometimes we wake up bright and early, eat our hotel breakfast (which, in Austria, consists of crusty breads, lunch meats, cheeses, and parfaits), and get to the next stage as quickly as we can, propelled by easy terrain with minimal rises and falls in the landscape.
Sometimes we wake up bright and early, eat our hotel breakfast, and realize that we have to take a lot of stops along the way because the terrain involves a lot of elevation gains and rock scrambles. We’ll make it, but slower than typical.
Sometimes we give ourselves permission to start an hour or two later than we intended, and spend the first couple of hours accepting that as our reality. Today’s going to be one of those days.
Sometimes, like yesterday, we alter our route to something more sustainable even though there’s a harder route that pushes our bodies and allows us to see more beautiful scenery.
Sometimes we take the bus.
Here’s the another three weeks of hiking, and a lifetime of navigating the choices and terrain that accompany living the life we want to live, which unfortunately includes participating in hustle culture.
Let’s heal together!