The reason for hustle

It's 87 days until Christmas. Usually this time of the year, I try my best to amass tons and tons of work for myself to be completed before December 1st, the start of my yearly Christmas holiday. The purpose of the work is to earn the holiday. (I'm one of those people who can only enjoy relaxation if the relaxation is balanced by the other extreme.)

So, last year, I was stressing out about my life not being hard enough - I was afraid that I could not appreciate the holiday if I just worked instead of burning myself completely out. Especially since the year before I had managed to completely burn myself out, and thus, Christmas had felt divine.

Now I realize that both those articles were from November. And now, it's only the end of September. And since I'm already scared that the one work goal (writing the first draft of one novel) I've set for this fall won't be enough to get that earned feeling, I'm beginning to conjure up more projects.

Hustle time!

A part of me feels great with this new resolve. As someone who gets more done when there's loads to do, I know that with several simultaneously ongoing projects of varying levels of difficulty, I'll get the novel done, as well as all kinds of other fun stuff.

Yet, having recently read Jack Donovan's The Way of Men, another part of me suspects that the reason for hustle is to keep yourself so busy you never have the chance to think about the real underlying issue.

RK