More, now, again. Circle back and touch bases. Multitask in your fast-paced environment. The onus is on you to do enough, to be enough. Hustle culture will push you to the precipice of anxiety, depression, and hopeless inadequacy. In the end, you’ll land in an abyss. In Corporate America, you are expendable.
When you’re face first in the mud of the abyss, you get to choose. You can wallow in it, or you can use it to make something new. Either way, there’s no going over or around it. The only way out of the mud is through it. Whatever you choose, you’re going to get filthy.
Over the past few decades, the pace of work life has become frenetic. Only part of that is attributable to the rise of the internet and social media. Corporate America is focused on profits over people and is often riddled with reactionary management. A vacuum of vision. Cream isn’t the only thing that floats to the top.
Thirteen years ago, I was mired in hustle culture trying to keep my job as a news photographer at a flailing, local daily. I couldn’t fathom how they could eliminate my job when instead of covering the 3-4 assignments a day standard at the beginning of my career, it burgeoned to 6-7 per day. No matter how many hours I worked, I got paid for 40. The hustle didn’t matter. I got laid off anyway.
The day I got laid off; I was in shock. I visited my parents, and my retired, former union leader father asked me what MY union would be doing about it. I laughed. I told him I wouldn’t be in this abyss if I had a union, if my former employer valued staff, which they referred to as family. What a misnomer that was. People told me my layoff would be “the best thing that ever happened to me, how lucky I was to have the summer off,” and other shockingly obtuse bits of word emesis.
At the time, my husband had just been diagnosed with cancer. I was dazed from that and from the theft of my livelihood. I manage challenges by sticking to routine, and I wonder how much better I would have fared had I had the routine of work to immerse myself in. The income would’ve come in handy, too.
Ten days after my layoff, I received letter stating that my family no longer had health insurance. My spiraling depression and anxiety lasted years. That’s not on my husband or his illness. It’s corporate greed. We were costing them money. Nothing has “trickled down” to workers in the 40 years since that phrase appeared in the vernacular. When I read record profits in a headline, I think wage theft.
In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute reported that CEO pay averaged 344 times more than worker pay, up from 21 times more in 1965. Income inequality stifles economic growth and concentrates political power to corporations and to the wealthy. The 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United granted corporations personhood and has flooded elections with money that favors the interests of the wealthy donor class over meaningful policy change that lifts middle and working-class families.
What I didn’t know at the time of my layoff was that would be the last three months of my father’s life. Even though I was whipsawed by depression, it was a gift it was to spend that time with him. He always delighted in seeing my byline, even after 28 years. What a precious gift I would have lost had I been mired in the hustle.
When we’re young, we dream of the trajectory our lives might take. Those dreams often include college, a meaningful career, and creating a family with that special someone. Nobody plans for the beatdowns life also serves up, but they make us grow in ways that comfort cannot. And that shockingly obtuse bit about the theft of my livelihood being the best thing that ever happened to me contained a drop of truth: I am stronger and more grounded now.
I found meaningful reemployment with the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ Sisters, who I do consider family. When my husband’s cancer returned, I didn’t lose my job. Instead, they prayed for us, and Sister Carole, an oncology nurse, walked our path with us. She answered our questions, allayed our fears, and is now my dearest friend. My husband lived, and together we raised two college-educated, resilient, and generous kids. We gave them roots and we gave them wings. And I also got those precious last months with my dad. Jobs are transient; it’s family that matters.
Music: "Everyone Alive" by Local H
