“Hustle.” There’s something about that word that the world glorifies, isn’t there? Sometimes it’s used as a verb, but so many times it’s used as a noun, alongside other words like “grit” and “perserverance” and “determination”; like the person who has hustle should be admired.

I have lived my entire life hurrying, rushing from one thing to another. Hustling to get from one act of service to the next, hustling to make people happy. As an adult, I hustled through college, pushing through just to move onto the next thing – teaching. And then pushing through everyday of teaching to move onto the next subject, the next lesson, the next test, just to go home and hurrying through dinner and laundry and crash for a few hours before getting up the next morning and starting over.

And then one day, I hustled too much. I was pregnant and hurrying through a field trip, and towards the end I sat down and just couldn’t get back up. I looked at one of my student’s parents (who is also my friend), and told her how awful I felt. She finished gathering my students up.

That was the last day I ever hustled.

The next day I ended up in the emergency room. And the day after that I was back in the emergency room. I was put on bedrest for what should have been four months, but ended up only being three because CallieGrace was born prematurely. I went to work to turn in my paperwork for my leave of absence, and I sat and told the students I had looped with and spent nearly three out of the past four years with that I wasn’t returning that school year. They cried, and I was just too exhausted to cry.

The day after I turned in my paperwork, I woke up unsure what to do with myself. For nearly 7 years I had been hurrying through the same routine, same busyness. I spent the day watching tv and miserably shuffling around, my mind fuzzy with muscle relaxers. The second day of bedrest was spent the same way. By the third day I was off any medicine, and when I woke up I felt a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in years. The immense amount of stress I had been encountering was just… gone. I could breathe.

And then after CallieGrace was born, my husband worked it out for me to stay home with her. And our lives permanently changed, formed by a sense of peace. Not because I don’t work outside of our home, but because we had made the best choice for our family, one where we weren’t both “hustling” to get from one moment to the next. We’ve given up a lot financially – we are sharing one car, and we don’t have much extra money for “fun” things. But that’s okay, because we have more time for each other.

I can firmly say this: we will never return to being a family that hurries and hustles. We won’t have a million activities going on. CallieGrace will never be involved in a different extracurricular every evening. If that’s what’s right for you, that’s obviously totally fine. There’s no judgement here; in fact, I admire you. It’s just not what’s best for us. We are choosing to be people that are present: for each other, and for the people and events and values that are most important to us. We can’t be present if we are running from one moment to the next, just barely trying to get by. We just can’t. And so my question is this:

Friend, why are you hustling? There’s nothing admirable about it. You’re not doing your kids any favors by just keeping them entertained instead of playing with them in the evenings, or having dinner together. And hey – there’s no judgement in what’s best for your family. Whether it’s sitting down together at the dinner table, or eating pizza and watching Friends (my kid loves Friends by the way – not sure if I should be proud of that or not).

Friend, why are you hustling? There’s nothing admirable about it. You’re not doing yourself any favors by rushing through your life. Take a vacation day; I promise your workplace will still function. And I’m just going to be super blunt for a minute. If your workplace can’t function without you, find a new job. It’s too much pressure to live under, being the only one who can make things run.

Read a good book. Don’t read a self help book; who you are right now is more than enough. Instead, read a great mystery or love story. Listen to a new podcast. Sleep in and drink a cup of tea or coffee. Just take a breath. You don’t have to keep up. You don’t have to hustle. And if you want to, that’s totally fine too. Just make sure it’s what you want, not just what you think you have to do.

Because your life absolutely doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

You do you.